It was a desperate endeavour, wrought of fear; but at that moment the true hands of the fo'castle were battened down, and Dan, who had seen the thing coming, escaped only by his foresight. That night he had felt danger, and had wrapped himself up in a tarpaulin, and lain concealed on deck.
As it was, Paolo stood at the door of the skipper's room; there were three men guarding the fo'castle, and five at the foot of the hurricane deck. One man we had settled with; but we were three, and eight men stood between us and the true hands.
Roderick was the first to get his wits, and plan a course.
"We must act now," he said, "before they miss their man. They've stopped the engines, and we shall drop behind the others. There's only one chance, and that is to surprise them. Let's rush it and take the odds."
"You can't rush it," I replied; "they're looking for that; and if one now went forward they would shoot him down straight—and what's to follow? They come aft, and how can we hold them? But we must get the skipper awake, or they'll knock him on the head while he sleeps."
Mary had listened, shivering with the night cold; but she had a word to add, and its wisdom was no matter for dispute.
"If I went," she said, "what could they do to me?"
We were all silent.
"I'm going now," she said; "while I'm talking to them they won't be looking for you."
"Certainly, we could follow up," I added, "and might get them down if you held them in talk; but don't you fear?"
She laughed, and gave answer by running up the companion-way, and standing at the top; while we cocked our pistols, and crept after her. Then we lay flat to the deck, as she ran noiselessly amidships, and into the very centre of the five men. To our astonishment, they gave a great howl of terror at the sight of her—for it lay so dark that she seemed but a thing of shadow hovering upon the ship—and bolted headlong forward; while we rushed in a body to the hurricane deck, and faced Paolo. He turned very white, and would have opened his lips; but Dan served him as the other; and hit him with his pistol, so that he rolled senseless off the narrow bridge, and we heard the thud of his head against the iron of the engine-room hatch. He had scarce fallen when Mary, with the laugh still upon her lips, reeled at the sight of him, and fell fainting in my arms. I knocked at the skipper's door, but he was already on his feet, and passed me to the bridge, where I laid the swooning girl on the sofa in the chart-room.
The skipper got the whole situation at the first look, and acted in his usual silence. He re-entered his own cabin, and came to us again with a couple of rifles, which he loaded. We were now all crouching together by the wheel amidships, for Mary had recovered, and insisted that I should leave her, and we waited for the heavy black clouds to lift off the moon; but the fore-deck lay dark ahead of us; and we could not tell whether the men who had fled had gone below, or were crouching behind the galley, and the skylights of the fore-cabins. Nor could we hear any sound of them, although the skipper hailed them twice. He was for going forward at once; but we held back until the light came, and then by the full moon we saw dark shadows across the hatch. The men were behind the galley, as we thought—the eight of them.
The skipper hailed them again.
"You, Karl, Williams—are you coming out now, for me to flog you; or will you swing at New York?"
I could see their whole performance in shadow, as they heard the hail. One of them cocked a pistol, and the rest huddled more closely together.
"Very well," continued the skipper, ironically deliberate. "You've got a couple of planks between you and eternity. I'm going to fire through that galley."
He raised his rifle at the word, and let go straight at the corner of the light wood erection. A dull groan followed, and by the shadow on the deck I saw one man fall forward amongst the others, who held him up with their shoulders; but his blood ran in a thick stream out to the top of the hatchway, and then ran back as the ship heaved to the seas.
For the fifth time the skipper hailed them.
"There's one down amongst you," he said; "and that's the beginning of it; I'm going to blow that shanty to hell, and you with it."
He raised his rifle, but as he did so one of them answered for the first time with his revolver, and the bullet sang above our heads. The skipper's shot was quick in reply; and the wood of the shanty flew in splinters as the bullet shivered it. A second man sprang to his feet with a shout, and then fell across the deck, lying full to be seen in the moonlight.
"That's two of you," continued the skipper, as calm as ever he was in Portsmouth harbour; "we'll make it three for luck." But at the suggestion they all made a run forward, and lay flat right out by the cable. There we could hear them blubbering like children.
The skipper was of a mind to end the thing there and then. He sprang down the ladder to the deck, and we followed him. They fired three shots as we rushed on them; but the butt ends of the two muskets did the rest. Three of them went down straight as felled poplars. The others fell upon their knees and implored mercy; and they got it, but not until the skipper, who now seemed roused to all the fury of great anger, set to kicking them lustily, and with no discrimination—for they all had their full share of it.
We had the other hands up by this, and, despite the tragedy and horror of the thing, a smile came to me as the true men set to binding the others at the skipper's order; for Piping Jack and Planks, and the whole ten of them, fell into such a train of swearing as would have done your heart good to hear. They got them below at the first break of dawn, and the dead they covered; while Paolo, who lay groaning, we carried to a cabin in the saloon, and did for his broken head that which our elementary knowledge of surgery permitted us.
As the day brought light upon the rising sea, I looked to the far horizon, but the rolling crests of an empty waste met my gaze. Again we were alone. The night's work had lost us the welcome company.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SHIP IN THE BLACK CLOAK.
The day that broke was glorious enough for Nature's making, but sad upon our ship, in that the folly of eight poor fellows should have cost the life of two, with three more lying near to death in the fo'castle. The sea had risen a good deal when we got under steam again, and clouds scudded over the sun; but we set stay-sails and jibs, and made a fine pace towards the shores of America. It was near noon when we had buried the two stokers shot by the skipper, and more on in the afternoon before the decks were made straight, and the traces of the scuffle quite obliterated. But Paolo lay all day in a delirium, and Mary went in and out, bearing a gentle hand to the wounded, who alternately cried with the pain of it, and begged grace for their insanity. The second officer's case was worse than theirs, and I thought at noon that the total of the dead would have been three; for he raved incessantly, crying "Ice, Ice!" almost with every breath, while we had all difficulty possible to hold him in his bunk. His words I could not get the meaning of; but I had them later, and in circumstances I had never looked for.
After the hour of lunch the skipper called Roderick and me into his cabin, and there he discussed the position with us.
"One thing is clear," he said; "you've brought me on more than a pleasure trip, and, while I don't complain, it will be necessary at New York for me to know something more—or, maybe to leave this ship. Last night's work must be made plain, of course; and this second officer of yours must stand to his trial. The men I would willingly let go, for they're no more than lubberly fools whose heads have been turned. But one thing I now make bold to claim—I take this yacht straight from here to Sandy Hook; and we poke our noses into no business on the way."
"Of course," said Roderick somewhat sarcastically, "you've every right to do what you like with my ship; but I seem to remember having engaged you to obey my orders."
"Fair orders and plain sailing," replied Captain York, bringing his fist down on the table