The villains were evidently enraged beyond all measure. I could see them in the death-grip, here wrestling as athletes upon a stage; there fighting upon their hands and knees, as savages who cut and slash at the face and head and heart in insurpassable lust of blood and life. But beyond this, the greater terror was to know that the ship sheltered Joan Fordibras, and that she must be the witness to this debauch. What could it mean to such a one to suffer that? Again I say that I had no courage to think of it. Our own situation forbade such thoughts. We were running right up as though to ram the leviathan before us, and the very voices of the combatants could now be distinguished by us; while the sunlight showed us the shimmer of the knives, the reeling figures, and the death agonies of our enemies. Had we been of the mind, we could have sent them to the bottom with a torpedo from our tube, and no man among us been a penny the worse for our temerity. But to such a vengeance as that we had no call; nor did we so much as contemplate it while Joan remained their hostage. It was sufficient to watch them as we would; to wait and hope for the first fruits of a tragedy so providential.
We had come to no agreement upon the nature of our approach or upon the limits which prudence should set to it. I left it to Larry’s wise head, and I could have done no better. A splendid seaman, he proved himself that day to be also a master of tactics which kept our yacht astern of the big ship, and crept up to her upon such an angle that risk of detection—at least until the fight should be over—need hardly be considered. Not until we were within a cable’s length of their poop did he bring White Wings to—and there we lay, rolling to a gentle swell, half the hands on deck, some on the riggings, the officers with Timothy and myself on the bridge; as amazed a company as sailed the Atlantic that day.
I have told you that the contending parties upon the deck of the rogue had taken their stands respectively at the fo’castle, and by the superstructure amidships. This seemed to point to the conclusion that the seamen of the ship had mutinied upon their officers; and Larry I found to be of my opinion.
“The hands have turned it up, and the dead-weight is going under,” said he, with an indifference to the suffering we witnessed that I had hardly looked for—“I shouldn’t wonder if you are responsible, sir. A thieves’ crew is for fair weather. Let a cloud come up as big as a man’s hand and they’ll run for port though Davy Jones takes the tiller. They’ve had enough of it—any man could see that with half an eye. And heaven help the Jew if he hauls his flag down.”
“You mean, Larry, that we have got on their nerves, and they can’t stand us any more. I shouldn’t wonder. They think we have support behind, and are waiting for a Government ship. That must be it—but if so, what do they want Imroth to do? Is it to run to port? They would hardly expect to land without trouble.”
“Men like that never know what they want, doctor. Did you ever see a Malay run amok? Well, I’ve been round the corner of a plantation hut when a yellow devil was taken with the idea that the exercise was good for him, and mighty quick I skipped, to be sure. That man wanted nothing in particular. It was an Eastern way of tearing up newspapers and smashing the crockery. Those fellows yonder don’t know what’s the matter with them, and they are going to cut up the Jew to see. I wish ’em luck, but I’d sooner be aboard here than eating macaroons on their deck, and that’s the truth of it. Ask Mr. McShanus what he thinks. Perhaps he’d like to put off in a small boat——?”
I looked at Timothy, and saw that he was as white as the planks on which he stood. Viewed from afar, the spectacle had been one of fire and smoke and imagined fury. But proximity made of it a picture of savage bloodshed, revolting in its fury and gruesome in its detail.
One incident stands out in my mind, horrible beyond others, yet an example of many the day was to show me. I recollect that just as we brought the yacht to, a man tried to creep out of the big cabin amidships, which plainly sheltered many of the Jew’s party on the Diamond Ship. The seamen by the fo’castle spied him immediately, and one of them fired a pistol at him—it was evident that the bullet struck him in the shoulder, for he clapped his hand there quickly, and then trying to run to his comrades, he fell heavily upon deck. Now began a scene such as I hope never again to witness. The wounded man lay upon the deck, hidden from our sight, of course, but plainly the object of a violent combat.
On the one side were his friends making frantic efforts to drag him to safety; on the other, the frenzied seamen shooting blindly at the place where they believed him to lie, and so at once preventing his escape and the approach of his companions. Baffled in their desire to kill him out of hand—for the corner of the cabin amidships prevented that—they, nevertheless, so frightened him that he lay cowed like a wounded bird, and thus afraid to rise to his feet or to make any effort to save himself, one of the hands from the fo’castle crept round the superstructure presently and deliberately cast a grappling anchor over the poor fellow’s body.
In an instant now the sailors had their victim. How the anchor had caught him, whether by the flesh or by his clothes, my position upon the bridge forbade me to see; but I could clearly perceive the hands pulling upon the rope and hear the ferocious exultation which such success provoked. Yard by yard they dragged the man to his doom. A quick imagination could depict him clinging madly to the combing of the forward hatch, clutching at the capstan and the windlass, contesting every inch of that terrible journey at whose end a score of unclasped knives awaited him. For myself, I turned my eyes away when the moment came and shut my ears to the dying man’s cry as it rang out, in fearful dread of death, over the hushed waters. They had killed him now, and while their shouts of triumph still echoed in the still air, they flung the body overboard, and it sank immediately from our sight. Such was their vengeance, such the punishment for what wrong, inflicted or imaginary, we knew not, nor cared to ask.
A great silence fell during the after moments of this tragedy—as though awe of it had compelled a mutual truce between the combatants. I do not know precisely at what moment Larry gave the order, but certain it is that the yacht began to steam slowly away from the ship when the dead man’s body fell into the sea; and having made a wide detour, we raced at some speed presently almost due south, as though pursuit of us had already begun. This was a course I could not protest against. Let the rogues agree, and our position were precarious indeed. Larry had perceived as much, and wisely stood away from them.
“They’ll be kissing each other if they spy us out,” said he. “I don’t believe they’ve any shell for the big guns, doctor, but they could do a power of mischief with the monkeys on the tops. We are as well off in the gallery as the stalls, especially in between times. Let us stand by where we shan’t amuse them so much.”
The wisdom of it forbade reply. We had pushed rashness to the last extremity, and had come to no hurt. The truce over yonder was unmistakable. When a steward reminded me that none of us had taken any breakfast. I heard him patiently.
“Bring it to the deck,” I rejoined.
And so four silent men—for Mr. Benson had joined us—sat about the table beneath the aft awning, and each, fearing to express the great hope which animated him, sipped his coffee methodically, and spoke of commonplace things.
CHAPTER XXVII.
DR. FABOS BOARDS THE DIAMOND SHIP.
And Learns the Truth There.
Our surmise that the rogues would agree presently among themselves and fall upon us for their common satisfaction was not supported by the facts. We breakfasted at our leisure and smoked a full pipe upon it, still unmolested and apparently unobserved. It may be that they had become accustomed to our presence. For seven days and nights now we had harassed them unceasingly. By messages, by gunshots, by our searchlight, had we pursued that policy of persistence which, we believed, would most surely demoralise and defeat them. And they had been powerless to harm us; helpless