Osmond stood motionless in a characteristic attitude, with his long legs wide apart, his hands clasped behind him, his gaunt shoulders hunched up, and his chin thrust forward, swaying regularly to the heave of the deck, and with his grim, hatchet face turned impassively towards his adversary, presented a decidedly uninviting aspect. Perhaps Dhoody appreciated this fact; at any rate, he advanced with an ostentatious show of strategy and much intimidating air-clawing. But he made a bad choice of the moment for the actual attack, for he elected to rush in just as the farther side of the deck was rising. In an instant Osmond’s statuesque immobility changed to bewilderingly rapid movement. There was a resounding “Smack, smack,” Dhoody flew backwards, capsizing two men behind him, staggered down the sloping deck, closely followed by Osmond (executing a continuous series of ‘postman’s knocks’ on the Dhoodian countenance), and finally fell sprawling in the scuppers, with his head jammed against a stanchion. The two capsized men scrambled to their feet, and, with their four comrades, closed in on Osmond with evidently hostile intentions. But the latter did not wait to be attacked. Acting on the advice of the Duke of Wellington—whom, by the way, he somewhat resembled in appearance—to ‘hit first and keep on hitting,’ he charged the group of seamen like an extremely self-possessed bull, hammering right and left, regardless of the unskilful thumps that he got in return, and gradually drove them, bewildered by his extraordinary quickness and the weight of his well-directed blows, through the space between the fore mast and the bulwark. Slowly they backed away before his continuous battering, hitting out at him ineffectively, hampered by their numbers and the confined space, until one man, who had had the bad luck to catch two upper cuts in succession, uttered a howl of rage and whipped out his sheath-knife. Osmond’s quick eye caught the dull glint of the steel just as he was passing the fife-rail. Instantly he whisked out an unoccupied iron belaying-pin, whirled it over and brought it down on the man’s head. The fellow dropped like a pole-axed ox, and as the belaying-pin rose aloft once more, the other five men sprang back out of range.
How the combat might have ended under other circumstances it is impossible to say. Dhoody had disappeared—with a bloody scalp and an obliterated eye; the man with the knife lay unconscious on the deck with a little red pool collecting by his head; the other five men had scattered and were hastily searching for weapons and missiles, so far as was possible with this bloodthirsty Bedlamite of a ‘factory bug’ flying up and down the deck flourishing a belaying-pin. Their principal occupation, in fact, was in keeping out of reach; and they did not always succeed.
Suddenly a shot rang out. A little cloud of splinters flew from the side of the mainmast, and the five seamen ducked simultaneously. Glancing quickly forward, Osmond beheld his late antagonist, Dhoody, emerging from the forecastle hatch and taking aim at him with a still smoking revolver. Now, the ‘factory bug’ was a pugnacious man and perhaps over-confident, too. But he had some idea of his limitations. You can’t walk up twenty yards of deck to punch the head of a man who is covering you with a revolver. At the moment, Osmond was abreast of the uncovered main hatch. A passing glance had shown him a tier of kernel bags covering the floor of the hold. Without a moment’s hesitation he stooped with his hands on the coaming, and, vaulting over, dropped plump on the bags, and then, picking himself up, scrambled forward under the shelter of the deck.
The hold of the Speedwell, like that of most vessels of her class, was a simple cavity, extending from the forecastle bulkhead to that of the after-cabin. Of this the forward part still contained a portion of the out ward cargo, while the homeward lading was stowed abaft the main hatch. But the hold was two-thirds empty and afforded plenty of room to move about.
Osmond took up a position behind some bales of Manchester goods and waited for the next move on the part of the enemy. He had not long to wait. Voices from above told him that the crew had gathered round the hatch; indeed, from his retreat, he could see some of them craning over the coamings, peering into the dark recesses of the hold.
“What are yer goin’ to do, Dhoody?” one of the men asked.
“I’m goin’ below to finish the beggar off,” was the reply in a tone of savage determination.
The place of a ladder was supplied by wooden footholds nailed to the massive stanchion that supported the deck and rested on the kelson. Osmond kept a sharp eye on the top foothold, clambering quickly on the closely packed bales to get within reach; and as a booted foot appeared below the beam and settled on the projection, he brought down his belaying-pin on the toe with a rap that elicited a yell of agony and caused the hasty withdrawal of the foot. For a minute or more the air was thick with execrations, and, as Osmond crept back into shelter, an irregular stamping on the deck above suggested some person hopping actively on one leg.
But the retreat was not premature. Hardly had Osmond squeezed himself behind the stack of bales when a succession of shots rang out from above, and bullet after bullet embedded itself in the rolls of cotton cloth. Osmond counted five shots and when there came an interval—presumably to reload—he ventured to peer between the bales, and was able to see Dhoody frantically emptying the discharged chambers of the revolver and ramming in fresh cartridges, while the five sailors stared curiously into the hold.
“Now then,” said Dhoody, when he had re-loaded, “you just nip down, Sam Winter, and see if I’ve hit him, and I’ll stand by here to shoot if he goes for yer.”
“Not me,” replied Sam. “You ’and me the gun and just pop down yerself. I’ll see as he don’t hurt yer.”
“How can I?” roared Dhoody, “with me fut hammered into a jelly?”
“Well,” retorted Sam, “what about my feet? D’ye think I can fly?”
“Oh,” said Dhoody, contemptuously, “if you funk the job, I won’t press yer. Bob Simmons ain’t afraid, I know. He’ll go.”
“Will he?” said Simmons. “I’m jiggered if he will! That bloke’s too handy with that pin for my taste. But I’ll hold the gun while you go, Dhoody.”
Dhoody cursed the whole ship’s company collectively and individually for a pack of chicken-livered curs. But not one of them would budge. Each was quite willing, and even eager, to do the shooting from above; but no one was disposed to go below and ‘draw the badger.’ The proceedings seemed to have come to a deadlock when one of the sailors was inspired with a new idea.
“Look ’ere, mates,” he said, oracularly; “’Tis like this ’ere: ’ere’s this ’ere bloomin’ ship with a nomicidal maniac in ’er ’old. Now, none of us ain’t a-goin’ down there for to fetch ’im out. We don’t want our ’eds broke same as what ’e’s broke Jim Darker’s ’ed. Contrarywise, so long as ’e’s loose on this ship, no man’s life ain’t worth a brass farden. Wherefore I says, bottle ’im up, I says; clap on the hatch-covers and batten down. Then we’ve got ’im, and then we can sleep in our bunks in peace.”
“That’s right enough, Bill,” another voice broke in, “but you’re forgettin’ that we’ve got a little job to do down below there.”
“Not yet, we ain’t,” the other rejoined; “not afore we gets down Ambriz way, and he’ll be quiet enough by then.”
This seemed to satisfy all parties, including even the ferocious Dhoody, and a general movement warned Osmond that his incarceration was imminent, For one moment he was disposed to make a last, desperate sortie, but the certainty that he would be a dead man before he reached the deck decided him to lie low. Many things might happen before the brigantine reached Ambriz.
As the hatchcovers grated over the coaming and dropped into their beds, the prisoner took a rapid survey of his surroundings before the last glimmer of daylight should be shut out. But he had scarcely time to memorize the geographical features of the hold before the last of the hatch-covers was dropped into its place. Then he heard the tarpaulin drag over the hatch, shutting out the last gleams of light that had filtered through the joints of the covers; the battens were dropped into their catches, the wedges