Fanny Campbell, The Female Pirate Captain: A Tale of The Revolution by Maturin M. Ballou

Author:Maturin M. Ballou [Ballou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sea stories, War stories, United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction, Women pirates -- Fiction
Published: 2014-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER VII.

FORECASTLE TALK, A NEW ENEMY, A CHASE, THE STORM. THE ACTION. THE FORTUNES OF THE FIGHT. SCENE ON BOARD THE ENEMY. THE TRICK. FEARFUL ENCOUNTER. SINGULAR DISCOVERY. FANNY A PRISONER. A PEEP AT THE CAMPBELLS’ FIRE-SIDE. THE PARENTS AT HOME.

Let us see how this mode of disposing of the case of the prisoner was received by the inhabitants of the forecastle, the rough and hardy men before the mast. Terrence Moony had come to be a sort of leader as it were among the crew, in all manner of opinion and judgment. Firstly, because he appeared to be peculiarly gifted with the ‘gab,’ as they say of a talkative man at sea, and secondly, because he was a jolly, free-hearted, whole-souled sort of a man. Terrence was very ready with his opinions on every occasion, being in no way loth to express them freely, and more especially at such a time and on such an occasion as the present. He always stood up for the captain, though for the matter of that, there was no man of the crew but would do the same. But then Terrence Moony was particularly sensitive on this point, and was sure to take up the most distant allusion that could possibly be made to reflect upon him.

‘Now who but our captain could have done that?’ asked Terrence confidently, referring to the freeing of the Englishman, ‘jist tell me that; and thin ain’t that British man another man altogether, ever since, intirely. Arrah, it’s the captain of us that’s under holy kapin’.

‘Hark ye, brother,’ said an old tar in reply to Terrence, and, by way of expressing an opinion, ‘whatever my friends may say for or against me, and whatever may be my other good points, they can’t say I’m much of a scholar, but for all that I think I know something about human nature, and damme if I wouldn’t trust this big Englishman with a match beside the magazine, if it had as many openings as a Chinese junk has windows.’

‘Well—’ said another very quietly, ‘I did think that captain Channing was a little hasty when he found out—’

‘Hey? What the divil did ye say?’ put in Terrence Moony fiercely, ‘the captain to blame,’ and he clenched a fist the size of a small infant’s head; ‘where’s the man that will say that?’

‘Avast there, brother,’ said the offender, ‘I say I did think him a little hasty at first, but then you see the result is all right, and no doubt the captain was within soundings all the while.’

‘To be sure he was,’ said Terrence, cooling his ire somewhat slowly.

‘I have seen as fine a seaman as this Englishman,’ said a third, whipt up to the end of a yard on board a British man of war, at the signal of a gun, but he didn’t come down reformed this man is, because why, d’ye see, he come down stiff and dead, and the next hour fed the sharks alongside.

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