The G.A. Henty MEGAPACK ®. G.a. Henty Henty
he had finished, Sir Sidney Smith said:
“That attack upon the pirates’ hold was extremely well managed, Mr. Wilkinson, and does you and Mr. Blagrove great credit. You were very brief in your account of it, and only said that a considerable amount of booty, which had evidently been taken from plundered ships, was found concealed, and that the more valuable portion was shipped on the Tigress. I will come on board in the morning, and you can have a few of those bales brought up on to the main deck, and we can see what is in them.”
A dozen bales were opened the next day; two contained European goods, the rest Eastern manufactures, silks and embroideries, Turkish, Syrian, and Persian carpets and rugs.
“That is enough!” Sir Sidney said. “Now, can you roughly give me an idea what proportion of European goods, dried fruits, and what we may call generally Eastern goods, you have?”
“There are about twenty tons of fruit, sir, thirty tons of European bales, and fifty or sixty tons of Eastern goods. Of these, I should say that two-thirds are carpets and rugs, we could pretty well tell these from the others by the size and feel of the bales; the rest are, judging from the few we opened, cloth for female garments—muslin, silks, scarves, sashes, and embroidered goods.
“It is extraordinary how so great a collection could have been made.”
“There have been a great many vessels employed in the making of it, sir, and we may say that we have here the pick from at least a hundred, perhaps several times that number, of captured craft of several sizes. No doubt the pirates would, in all cases, put aside goods of this kind, for although of no use to themselves, and no doubt very difficult to sell, they would store them away under the idea that some time or other an opportunity would occur of turning them into money.”
“Well, there is no doubt that you have an extremely rich prize. I should be afraid to give even an approximate calculation of what all this is worth. Some of our East-Indiamen bring very valuable cargoes home; but I should doubt whether any one ship ever carried as much costly merchandise as you have stored here. I will think over how they had best be got to England. The things will require careful handling, for if they were consigned to an ordinary prize agent they might be sold anyhow and for half their value.”
On the following day the two midshipmen were signalled to come on board the Tigre.
“I have been thinking your matter over, gentlemen,” Sir Sidney said when they had entered his cabin. “I have power to appoint a prize agent in England. As a matter of fact I have not done so. Coming out here, as I did, on a diplomatic mission, I had no thought of taking prizes. Those we have picked up here I simply sent to the agent at Gibraltar, which, by the way, is one of the very worst places one can send them to, as the vessels are sold at ridiculous prices. Ordinarily Malta would be the port we should have sent them to from here, but as it is still in the possession of the French, Gibraltar is the only port in the Mediterranean. Of course they might be sent to England; but there is the difficulty of detaching men and officers, and the risk of their being captured by French privateers, so that practically we are driven to Gibraltar.
“Of course the prize court will have the disposal of the cargo, but I will write to the head of the court, who is a personal friend of mine, asking him to intrust the sale of the Eastern goods to your father, Mr. Blagrove, saying that as he has been for years engaged in trade in the East, and must therefore be acquainted with the value of these things, is in the habit of sending Egyptian silks and so on to London for sale, he must know the channels in which they could be best disposed of. Of course the dried fruits and the English goods could be sold by the court, but it would never do to throw such a quantity of Eastern goods on the market at once. Among the prizes that have been taken is a smart brig of about the same size as the Tigress. She was caught making for Alexandria with powder and ball for the French army. Fortunately for us her captain was not a first-class navigator, and so missed his mark by about ten miles, and found himself, to his consternation and our satisfaction, close under our guns.
“I was going to send her to Gibraltar to be sold. I do not think that we can do better than buy her to carry home your cargo. I will call a court of four officers to put on her the price they consider it probable that she will fetch, which, I should say, if she were sold at Gibraltar, would not be over eight or nine hundred pounds. You, Mr. Blagrove, can buy her in the name of your father, and I will take your bill at three months upon him. Then there is the question of the crew. As to the officers, I can send you home, Mr. Wilkinson, with despatches. I have not had an opportunity of forwarding any for some weeks now; and to you, Mr. Blagrove, I can give three months’ leave on urgent private business. As to men, we have small craft coming over here constantly from Sicily with fruit and fresh provisions, and I have no doubt that, with the offer of good wages, you would be able to pick up ten or twelve men without much difficulty.
“On board our ships there are, I should say, at least twenty men who have been invalided by boards of doctors as being unfit for service, either from the effects of wounds or climate, and this would be a good opportunity for sending them home. Many of them are still fit for easy work, and would, at any rate, counterbalance your Italian crew. Of course I should formally take a passage for them in Mr. Blagrove’s ship. The prize mounts six guns, but I would advise you to keep well out of the way of French privateers. Of course the final result of the sale of the merchandise would have to be paid by your father, Mr. Blagrove, into the prize court for division among those entitled to it.
“With the ship, as your father’s property, the case is different; that is his private venture. He will, of course, charge freight on the merchandise, and he will get two or three pounds a head for taking the invalids home. As he will certainly get double the price the brig would fetch at Gibraltar, that and the freight would a good deal more than clear all expenses, and he will of course have the usual prize-agent’s commission on the sales he effects. What do you think of that plan?”
Both the midshipmen were highly pleased with the proposal, and thanked their commander very heartily for his kindness. A board of officers assembled on the following day and assessed the value of the French brig at £850, and Edgar formally bought her in his father’s name for that sum, and drew a bill upon him for payment in three months.
He had several times heard from him since he had entered on board the Tigre, and in the first letter Mr. Blagrove gave a hearty approval of the course that he had adopted, and said that a year or two at sea would give him a thorough knowledge of ships and be a considerable advantage to him in their business. The receipt of Edgar’s first letter, and of a heavy budget containing the account of his doings in Egypt from the day on which he was left behind to that on which he sailed, had been an immense relief to them all, for hitherto they had been in absolute ignorance of what had taken place. His father, however, thought that he had, even according to his own account, run a very needless risk in taking part in the rising at Cairo, although he saw that, having for the time become so thoroughly associated with the Arabs, it would have been difficult for him to avoid acting with them when there was danger in so doing.
CHAPTER XVI
A VISIT HOME
The new purchase, which was named the Suzanne, was towed alongside the Tigress, and the crew began at once to get up the cargo and transfer it to her hold. More method was observed in restowing the cargo than had before been possible. The dried fruit, as the heaviest of the goods, was placed in the middle of the brig; the European goods, whose brands and packing enabled them to be easily distinguished from the rest, were placed forward; and the Eastern bales packed aft. This was done under the direction of the petty officers.
During the four days that it took to complete the work, Edgar boarded several of the Italian craft, and succeeded in inducing ten active young sailors to join him, by the offer of a rate of pay several times higher than that they earned in their native craft, and of a free passage back on the first opportunity. Condor was appointed to the command of the Tigress, as two supernumerary lieutenants and four midshipmen had been sent out from home to the Tigre, and two midshipmen received acting orders as his lieutenants. There was much satisfaction among the junior officers of the Tigre when they heard from Wilkinson the nature of the spoil he had gathered, and all sorts of guesses were hazarded as to its value.
“I