of the bark Gloria Scott, from her leaving Falmouth on
the 8th October, 1855, to her destruction in N. Lat.
15 degrees 20', W. Long. 25 degrees 14' on Nov. 6th.'
It is in the form of a letter, and runs in this way:
"'My dear, dear son, now that approaching disgrace
begins to darken the closing years of my life, I can
write with all truth and honesty that it is not the
terror of the law, it is not the loss of my position
in the county, nor is it my fall in the eyes of all
who have known me, which cuts me to the heart; but it
is the thought that you should come to blush for
me--you who love me and who have seldom, I hope, had
reason to do other than respect me. But if the blow
falls which is forever hanging over me, then I should
wish you to read this, that you may know straight from
me how far I have been to blame. On the other hand,
if all should go well (which may kind God Almighty
grant!), then if by any chance this paper should be
still undestroyed and should fall into your hands, I
conjure you, by all you hold sacred, by the memory of
your dear mother, and by the love which had been
between us, to hurl it into the fire and to never give
one thought to it again.
"'If then your eye goes onto read this line, I know
that I shall already have been exposed and dragged
from my home, or as is more likely, for you know that
my heart is weak, by lying with my tongue sealed
forever in death. In either case the time for
suppression is past, and every word which I tell you
is the naked truth, and this I swear as I hope for
mercy.
"'My name, dear lad, is not Trevor. I was James
Armitage in my younger days, and you can understand
now the shock that it was to me a few weeks ago when
your college friend addressed me in words which seemed
to imply that he had surprised my secret. As Armitage
it was that I entered a London banking-house, and as
Armitage I was convicted of breaking my country's
laws, and was sentenced to transportation. Do not
think very harshly of me, laddie. It was a debt of
honor, so called, which I had to pay, and I used money
which was not my own to do it, in the certainty that I
could replace it before there could be any possibility
of its being missed. But the most dreadful ill-luck
pursued me. The money which I had reckoned upon never
came to hand, and a premature examination of accounts
exposed my deficit. The case might have been dealt
leniently with, but the laws were more harshly
administered thirty years ago than now, and on my
twenty-third birthday I found myself chained as a
felon with thirty-seven other convicts in 'tween-decks
of the bark Gloria Scott, bound for Australia.
"'It was the year '55 when the Crimean war was at its
height, and the old convict sips had been largely used
as transports in the Black Sea. The government was
compelled, therefore, to use smaller and less suitable
vessels for sending out their prisoners. The Gloria
Scott had been in the Chinese tea-trade, but she was
an old-fashioned, heavy-bowed, broad-beamed craft, and
the new clippers had cut her out. She was a
five-hundred-ton boat; and besides her thirty-eight
jail-birds, she carried twenty-six of a crew, eighteen
soldiers, a captain, three mates, a doctor, a
chaplain, and four warders. Nearly a hundred souls
were in her, all told, when we set said from Falmouth.
"'The partitions between the cells of the convicts,
instead of being of thick oak, as is usual in
convict-ships, were quite thin and frail. The man
next to me, upon the aft side, was one whom I had
particularly noticed when we were led down the quay.
He was a young man with a clear, hairless face, a
long, thin nose, and rather nut-cracker jaws. He
carried his head very jauntily in the air, had a
swaggering style of walking, and was, above all else,
remarkable for his extraordinary height. I don't
think any of our heads would have come up to his
shoulder, and I am sure that he could not have
measured less than six and a half feet. It was
strange among so many sad and weary faces to see one
which was full of energy and resolution. The sight of
it was to me like a fire in a snow-storm. I was glad,
then, to find that he was my neighbor, and gladder
still when, in the dead of the night, I heard a
whisper close to my ear, and found that he had managed
to cut an opening in the board which separated us.
"'"Hullo, chummy!" said he, "what's your name, and
what are you here for?"
"'I answered him, and asked in turn who I was talking
with.
"'"I'm Jack Prendergast," said he, "and by God! You'll
learn to bless my name before you've done with me."
"'I remembered hearing of his case, for it was one
which had made an immense sensation throughout the
country some time before my own arrest. He was a man
of good family and of great ability, but on incurably
vicious habits, who had be an ingenious system of
fraud obtained huge sums of money from the leading
London merchants.
"'"Ha, ha! You remember my case!" said he proudly.
"'"Very well, indeed."
"'"Then maybe you remember something queer about it?"
"'"What was that, then?"
"'"I'd had nearly a quarter of a million, hadn't I?"
"'"So it was said."
"'"But none was recovered, eh?"
"'"No."
"'"Well, where d'ye suppose the balance is?" he asked.
"'"I have no idea," said I.
"'"Right between my finger and thumb," he cried. "By
God! I've go more pounds to my name than you've hairs
on your head. And if you've money, my son, and know
how to handle it and spread it, you can do anything.
Now, you don't think it likely that a man who could do
anything is going to wear his breeches out sitting in
the stinking hold of a rat-gutted, beetle-ridden,
mouldy old coffin of a Chin China coaster. No, sir,
such a man will look after himself and will look after
his chums. You may lay to that! You hold on to him,
and you may kiss the book that he'll haul you
through."
"'That was his style of talk, and at first I thought
it meant nothing; but after a while, when he had
tested me and sworn me in with all possible solemnity,
he let me understand that there really was a plot to
gain command of the vessel. A dozen of the prisoners
had hatched it before they came aboard, Prendergast
was the leader, and his money was the motive power.
"'"I'd a partner," said he, "a rare good man, as true
as a stock to a barrel. He's got the dibbs, he has,
and where do you think he is at this moment? Why,
he's the chaplain of this ship--the chaplain, no less!
He came aboard with a black coat, and his papers
right, and money enough in his box to buy the thing
right up from keel to main-truck. The crew are his,
body and soul. He could buy 'em at so much a gross
with a cash discount, and he did it before ever they
signed on. He's got two of the warders and Mereer,
the second mate, and he'd get the captain himself, if
he thought him worth it."
"'"What are we to do, then?" I asked.
"'"What do you think?" said he. "We'll make the coats
of some of these soldiers redder than ever the tailor
did."
"'"But they are armed," said I.
"'"And so shall we be, my boy. There's a brace of
pistols for every mother's son of us, and if we can't
carry this ship, with the crew at our back, it's time
we were all sent to a young misses' boarding-school.
You speak to your mate upon the left to-night, and see
if he is to be trusted."
"'I did so, and found my other neighbor to be a young
fellow in much the same position as myself, whose
crime had been forgery. His name was Evans, but he
afterwards changed it, like myself, and his is now a
rich and prosperous man in the south of England. He
was ready enough to join the conspiracy, as the only
means of saving ourselves, and before we had crossed
the Bay there were only two of the prisoners who were
not in the secret. One of these was of weak mind, and
we did not dare to trust him, and the other was
suffering from jaundice, and could not be of any use
to us.
"'From the beginning there was really nothing to
prevent us from taking possession of the ship. The
crew were a set of ruffians, specially picked for the
job. The sham chaplain came into our cells to exhort
us, carrying a black bag, supposed to be full of
tracts, and so often did he come that by the third day
we had each stowed away at the foot of our beds a
file, a brace of pistols, a pound of powder, and
twenty slugs. Two of the warders were agents of
Prendergast, and the second mate was his right-hand
man. The captain, the two mates, two warders
Lieutenant Martin, his eighteen soldiers, and the
doctor were all that we had against us. Yet, safe as
it was, we determined to neglect no precaution, and to
make our attack suddenly by night. It came, however,
more quickly than we expected, and in this way.
"'One evening, about the third week after our start,
the doctor had come down to see one of the prisoners
who was ill, and putting his hand down on the bottom
of his bunk he felt the outline of the pistols. If he
had been silent he might have blown the whole thing,
but he was a nervous little chap, so he gave a cry of
surprise and turned so pale that the man knew what was
up in an instant and seized him. He was gagged before
he could give the alarm, and tied down upon the bed.
He had unlocked the door that led to the deck, and we
were through it in a rush. The two sentries were shot
down, and so was a corporal who came running to see
what was the matter. There were two more soldiers at
the door of the state-room, and their muskets seemed
not to be loaded, for they never fired upon us, and
they were shot while trying to fix their bayonets.
Then we rushed on into the captain's cabin, but as we
pushed open the door there was an explosion from
within, and there he lay wit his brains smeared over
the chart of the Atlantic which was pinned upon the
table, while the chaplain stood with a smoking pistol
in his hand at his elbow. The two mates had both been
seized by the crew, and the whole business seemed to
be settled.
"'The state-room was next the cabin, and we flocked in
there and flopped down on the settees, all speaking
together, for we were just mad with the feeling that
we were free once more. There were lockers all round,
and Wilson, the sham chaplain, knocked one of them in,
and pulled out a dozen of brown sherry. We cracked
off the necks of the bottles, poured the stuff out
into tumblers, and were just tossing them off, when in
an instant without warning there came the roar of
muskets in our ears, and the saloon was so full of
smoke that we could not see across the table. When it
cleared again the place was a shambles. Wilson and
eight others were wriggling on the top of each other
on the floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on
that table turn me sick now when I think of it. We
were so cowed by the sight that I think we should have
given the job up if had not been for Prendergast. He
bellowed like a bull and rushed for the door with all
that were left alive at his heels. Out we ran, and
there on the poop were the lieutenent and ten of his
men. The swing skylights above the saloon table had
been a bit open, and they had fired on us through the
slit. We got on them before they could load, and they
stood to it like men; but we had the upper hand of
them, and in five minutes it was all over. My God!
Was there ever a slaughter-house like that ship!
Predergast was like a raging deveil, and he picked the
soldiers up as if they had been children and threw
them overboard alive or dead. There was one sergeant
that was horribly wounded and yet kept on swimming for
a surprising time, until some one in mercy blew out
his brains. When the fighting was over there was no
one left of our enemies except just the warders the
mates, and the doctor.
"'It was over them that the great quarrel arose.
There were many of us who were glad enough to win back
our freedom, and yet who had no wish to have murder on
our souls. It was one thing to knock the soldiers
over with their muskets in their hands, and it was
another to stand by while men were being killed in
cold blood. Eight of us, five convicts and three
sailors, said that we would not see it done. But
there was no moving Predergast and those who were with
him. Our only chance of safety lay in making a clean
job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue
with power to wag in a witness-box. It nearly came to
our sharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he
said that if we wished we might take a boat and go.
We jumped at the offer, for we were already sick of
these blookthirsty doings, and we saw that there would
be worse before it was done. We were given a suit of
sailor togs each, a barrel of water, two casks, one of
junk and one of biscuits, and a compass. Prendergast
threw us over a chart, told us that we were
shipwrecked mariners whose ship had foundered in Lat.
15 degrees and Long 25 degrees west, and then cut the painter and
let us go.
"'And now I come to the most surprising part of my
story, my dear son. The seamen had hauled the
fore-yard aback during the rising,
but now as we left
them they brought it square again, and as there was a
light wind from the north and east the bark began to
draw slowly away from us. Our boat lay, rising and
falling, upon the long, smooth rollers, and Evans and
I, who were the most educated of the party, were
sitting in the sheets working out our position and
planning what coast we should make for. It was a nice
question, for the Cape de Verds were about five
hundred miles to the north of us, and the African
coast about seven hundred to the east. On the whole,
as the wind was coming round to the north, we thought
that Sierra Leone might be best, and turned our head
in that direction, the bark being at that time nearly
hull down on our starboard quarter. Suddenly as we
looked at her we saw a dense black cloud of smoke
shoot up from her, which hung like a monstrous tree
upon the sky line. A few seconds later a roar like
thunder burst upon our ears, and as the smoke thinned
away there was no sign left of the Gloria Scott. In
an instant we swept the boat's head round again and
pulled with all our strength for the place where the
haze still trailing over the water marked the scene of
this catastrophe.
"'It was a long hour before we reached it, and at
first we feared that we had come too late to save any
one. A splintered boat and a number of crates and
fragments of spars rising and falling on the waves
showed us where the vessel had foundered; but there
was no sign o life, and we had turned away in despair
when we heard a cry for help, and saw at some distance
a piece of wreckage with a man lying stretched across
it. When we pulled him aboard the boat he proved to
be a young seaman of the name of Hudson, who was so
burned and exhausted that he could give us no account
of what had happened until the following morning.
"'It seemed that after we had left, Prendergast and
his gang had proceeded to put to death the five
remaining prisoners. The two warders had been shot
and thrown overboard, and so also had the third mate.
Prendergast then descended into the 'tween-decks and
with his own hands cut the throat of the unfortunate
surgeon. There only remained the first mate, who was
a bold and active man. When he saw the convict
approaching him with the bloody knife in his hand he
kicked off his bonds, which he had somehow contrived
to loosen, and rushing down the deck he plunged into
the after-hold. A dozen convicts, who descended wit
their pistols in search of him, found him with a
match-box in his hand seated beside an open
powder-barrel, which was one of a hundred carried on
board, and swearing that he would blow all hands up if
he were in any way molested. An instant later the
explosion occurred, though Hudson thought it was
caused by the misdirected bullet of one of the
convicts rather than the mate's match. Be the cause
what I may, it was the end of the Gloria Scott and of
the rabble who held command of her.
"'Such, in a few words, my dear boy, is the history of
this terrible business in which I was involved. Next
day we were picked up by the brig Hotspur, bound for
Australia, whose captain found no difficulty in
believing that we were the survivors of a passenger
ship which had foundered. The transport ship Gloria
Scott was set down by the Admiralty as being lost at
sea, and no word has ever leaked out as to her true
fate. After an excellent voyage the Hotspur landed us
at Sydney, where Evans and I changed our names and
made our way to the diggings, where, among the crowds
who were gathered from all nations, we had no
difficulty in losing our former identities. The rest
I need not relate. We prospered, we traveled, we came
back as rich colonials to England, and we bought
country estates. For more than twenty years we have
led peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our
past was forever buried. Imagine, then, my feelings
when in the seaman who came to us I recognized
instantly the man who had been picked off the wreck.
He had tracked us down somehow, and had set himself to
live upon our fears. You will understand now how it
was that I strove to keep the peace with him, and you
will in some measure sympathize with me in the fears
which fill me, now that he has gone from me to his
other victim with threats upon his tongue.'