Chapter 11-4
1165 Words
Unfortunately, it also decreased our
accuracy with the rifles. I fired several rounds at the first boat
I saw. It was a shallow draft schooner with two sails suspended
from spars and a large headsail attached to the bowsprit. The boat
was maybe sixty feet long and looked to have perhaps thirty men
aboard her, some of whom were carrying ropes with grappling hooks
attached. I made a point at firing at those men. I couldn’t tell if
I hit anybody.
Within minutes, the amount of firing from
the Trave was deafening, as both crew and armed passengers
laid down a withering fusillade of rifle fire. Several of the boats
turned away, perhaps not expecting such a spirited defense from a
freighter. However, others kept coming.
The pirates were not going to be easily
repulsed. As the smaller boats continued to make an effort to get
near enough to throw their grappling hooks, larger ships beyond
commenced some withering fire of their own. The sound of bullets
thwacking and ricocheting off the steel hull as well as the bridge,
forecastle, and mooring appliances on the deck behind me forced me
to move away from the opening where I had been firing my rifle.
Then the firing from the pirates stopped. A
few seconds later, I heard the metal clank of grappling hooks as
they soared up and over the Trave’s gunwales. I stood up and
began firing at dozens of men who were already starting to climb up
grappling lines and rope ladders. For a moment, it reminded me of
the re-coaling operation I had witnessed in Nagasaki. But these men
were not carrying coal. They were armed with rifles, pistols, and
knives.
Major Friant and I began firing as fast as
we could at the pirates, picking them off before they could reach
the gunwales. Dr. Son and several others were doing the same. A few
men reached the gunwale and tried to climb aboard, but most were
beaten back by crewmembers with fishing gaffs and heavy wooden
truncheons.
One pirate climbed halfway over the gunwale
next to Maurice De Cotte and stabbed him in the upper arm with a
long dagger. De Cotte fell to the floor, and as he did, I fired my
Mauser at the pirate. The round hit him just below his neck, and he
tumbled backward over the gunwale and fell into the ocean
below.
Just then, the helmsman turned the ship
sharply to port and away from the small boats in which many of the
pirates, who now hung from the grappling lines, had arrived. We
continued to fire, and one after another, the pirates fell or
plunged into the water. As those who were not wounded or dead began
to swim away from the Trave, the ship turned back on them,
hitting and pushing them under the hull.
We stood up and continued to fire at the
larger boats that were some four hundred yards away. Those boats
were well within the range of our Mausers, but our accuracy was not
very good because of the helmsman’s evasive maneuvers. The battle
went on for perhaps for another twenty minutes until there was a
long blast from the ship’s steam whistle. It was the signal to
cease firing. The barrel of my Mauser was sizzling to the touch,
and it was then that I realized I had fired maybe eighty rounds
without let up.
Moments later, several crewmembers ran along
the deck, repeating the cease-fire order. We were elated. We had
repulsed the boarding parties. There was a lot of backslapping and
hand shaking. That was short-lived, however, as we watched several
crewmen carry wounded men on stretchers from the stern to the
ship’s infirmary. At least six men had been wounded, and two had
been killed during the attack.
A few minutes later, we were all on the
bridge where Captain Fischert shook each of our hands.
“Gentlemen, you acquitted yourselves in
excellent fashion, I must say. I think we can safely say those
pirates got what they didn’t expect—a thorough thrashing.”
I looked around for Dr. Son just in time to
see him prop his rifle against a bulkhead on the bridge.
“If you don’t mind, Captain, I will go to
the infirmary to see if I can be of assistance,” he said.
By now, the sun behind us was moving higher
in a bright azure sky, and the helmsman was steering the
Trave in a straight westerly line. I returned my rifle and
unused ammunition to the crewman in charge of the armory. I offered
to clean the Mauser, but he declined the offer.
“No, sir… that’s my job… but thank you
anyways.”
I was about to leave when someone grabbed my
shoulder. It was DDe Cotte, whose shirt was soaked red with blood
from the knife wound in his left arm.
“Thank you,” he said. “I think he is killing
me until you shoot him.”
“You should get to the infirmary and have
someone take a look at that,” I said, nodding toward his bloody
arm.
“Oui, je vais maintenant,” DDe Cotte said.
Then he walked out of the bridge toward the infirmary.
I walked back to my cabin and immediately
fell asleep for the next five hours. When I awoke, it was late
afternoon. Someone had slipped an envelope under the door of my
cabin. It was an invitation for drinks with the captain that
evening.
When I arrived, there were roughly thirty
people standing in the dining room all holding some form of
beverage. The talk was of that morning’s successful defeat of the
pirates peppered with a lot of praising and bragging.
It took Captain Fischert to remind the
gathering that two men had been killed and five others wounded,
including Monsieur De Cotte.
“I have made this voyage maybe thirty times
and this is the first time the Trave has been attacked by
pirates,” he said. “If there is a next time, maybe they will
remember this ship and the battle we put up.”
I left soon afterward and for the next day
and a half kept to myself. The day after that, I was informed we
would be arriving at Cap Saint-Jacques, a seaside port town some
sixty miles from Saigon Commercial Port.
Cap Saint-Jacques was a rather nondescript
place, replete with fishing boats and rocky beaches. We had to stop
there, however, so a pilot could come aboard and guide the
Trave through the Long Tau tidal channel, which twisted its
way through menacing mangrove swamps to the Nha Be River. From
there, we moved a short distance up the Saigon River, which was a
small tributary of the Nha Be River. After some two and a half
hours, the ship finally tied up at the Messageries Maritimes
quay.
I had finally made it to Saigon. What a trip
it had been. Not only had I met some fascinating people, not the
least of which was the baroness Katharina Schreiber, but I had also
eluded an unrelenting Pinkerton man, survived a typhoon, and
finally, I had actually battled pirates. I would have plenty to
write about once I was settled in Saigon.
- Writer
