The Ghost Ship/Chapter Twenty Five.

Chapter Twenty Five. Hors de Combat.

A grand hurrah just then burst forth from the deck below us, where the skipper and most of the men were massed, telling as plainly as triumphant cheer could tell, that the fight was ended and that victory had crowned our arms with success. I rushed back to tell the colonel.

On hearing my footsteps, however, little Elsie turned round and caught sight of me.

“Oh, my father!” said she, untwining herself from the colonel’s embrace, though she still nestled up close to him, as she stared at me shyly, with a puzzled look on her mignonne face. “Why, who is this young sir, my father? I seem to know him, and yet I do not remember having ever seen him before!”

“Look at him again, darling one,” said her father, petting her caressingly, while another hearty cheer went up from the hands in the waist. “He is Señor Dick Haldane, a gallant young gentleman whom you must thank, my little daughter, for having saved my life.”

At this the graceful young girl advanced a step or two towards me, and catching hold of my hand, before I could prevent her, kissed it, greatly to my confusion; as albeit it was an act expressive amongst the Spanish with whom she had been brought up, of deferential courtesy and gratitude, but it made me blush up to my eyes and feel hot all over.

“A thousand thanks, sir,” she began; but as she raised her eyes to my face in thus giving utterance to her thanks for having, as the colonel had told her, saved her father’s life, a flood of recollection seemed to come upon her, and she exclaimed:

“Ah, I remember now! My father, yes, he is like the gentleman whom I saw on the deck of the steamer that awful night when the negroes rose up against us—last Friday, was it not? But it seems so long ago to me! You, you naughty papa, would not believe that your little girl had seen anything at all, not even a ship, but that I only fancied it in my foolishness. However, there is the same steamer that I saw (pointing with her finger to the Star of the North), and here is the same, for I am sure he is the same, the very same young officer. Am I not right?” And looking up at her father, she exclaimed, “Your little girl told the truth after all.”

“And you, young lady,” said I, smiling at her recognition of me, strange coincidence as it was, corroborating my own experience of the same eventful night, “yes; you are the same little girl I saw on board the ‘ghost-ship,’ as all the men here called your vessel, not believing, likewise, my story that I had seen her or you either. Yes, I would have known you anywhere. You are the girl whom I saw with the dog!”

The next moment I could have bitten my tongue out, though, for my thoughtlessness in alluding to the poor dog; for at the bare mention of him Elsie’s face, which had a sort of absent, wandering look about it still, at once lighted up, and she glanced round in all directions.

“Ah, I declare I had quite forgotten Ivan in the joy and happiness of seeing you again, my father,” she exclaimed excitedly. “Where is he, the brave fellow? Ivan, Ivan, you dear old dog. Come here; come here, sir, directly!”

She looked round again, with a half smile playing about the corners of her pretty rosebud of a mouth and a joyous light in her eyes, expecting her faithful friend and companion would come bounding up to her side; but she now waited and watched and listened in vain, there being no response to her summons either by bark or bound or wag of poor Ivan’s bushy tail.

Nor would there be any more, for his ringing bark was hushed, his body and tail alike stiff and cold, while his noble heart which only throbbed with affection for those whom he loved when living, had stopped beating for aye.

“My dear child, poor Ivan is dead!” said Colonel Vereker tenderly after a short pause, drawing the young girl up to him so that she might not see the gruesome sight on the deck below. “The brave dog sacrificed his life for mine, and but for his help, little one, I should not now be by your side.”

This account of the poor animal’s heroic end, however, did not comfort little Elsie, who gave a startled glance at her father’s face; where, seeing something there that made her comprehend her loss, she buried her golden head on his breast, sobbing as though her heart would break.

“Poor, poor, dear Ivan; he never left me once, never, my father, since you—you went out of the cabin that last night and told him to watch me!” she exclaimed presently, in halting accents between her convulsive sobs, neither the colonel or myself dry-eyed as we listened to her tale, you may be sure. “But—but all at once, after all the noise and that dreadful firing that seems now to go through my ears, I—I heard your voice quite distinctly on the deck; and so, too, did poor Ivan, for I saw him instantly put up his ears, while he whined and looked beseechingly at us.”

“Well, after that, my child,” said the colonel, on her stopping for the moment, overcome with emotion, “what happened next?”

“He made a dash at the cabin table and jumped up on it, and then the poor fellow growled savagely at some one outside. Then—then before I could hold him back he made a most desperate spring and sprung right up through the glass roof on the top of the sky—skylight, and he must have cut himself very very much. Poor, poor doggie! And now you say my poor Ivan is dead, and that I shall never see the dear good faithful creature again. Oh, my father!”

At this point the young girl again broke down.

Nor were her tears a mere passing tribute of grief. For, though dead, Ivan is not forgotten, like some people, the remembrance of whom is as evanescent as the scent of the flowers that hypocritical mourners may ostentatiously scatter upon their graves; his little mistress, little no longer, preserving his memory yet green in her heart of hearts, close to which she wears always a small locket containing likenesses of her father and mother, together with a miniature of Ivan—her father’s preserver—with a tiny lock added from the brave dog’s curly black coat.

Some ultra-sanctimonious persons may feel inclined to cavil with this association on Elsie’s part of “immortal beings,” as they would style her parents, and the recollection she cherishes of a “dead brute,” because, forsooth, they hold that her four-footed favourite had no soul; but were these gentry to broach the subject before her, being a somewhat outspoken young lady from her foreign bringing up, which puts her beyond the pale of boarding-school punctiliousness, she would probably urge that she estimated poor Ivan’s sagacious instinct combined with his courage and noble self-sacrifice, at a far higher level than the paltry apology for a soul that passes current for the genuine article with matter-of-fact religionists of the stamp of her questioner.

But Elsie was “little Elsie” still, at the time of which I am speaking, and too young, perhaps, for such thoughts to occur to her mind, which at the moment was too full of her loss.

The cheering that had followed the last tussle of our men with the black mutineers had now ceased, and all these things happening, you must understand, much more rapidly than I can talk or attempt to chronicle them, the skipper, with Mr Fosset and Garry O’Neil, came hurriedly up on the poop.

Both expressed their unbounded delight at seeing the child was safe and in the care of her father.

Sure, an’ what’s the little colleen cryin’ for? eagerly inquired Garry, his smoke-begrimed face, which bore ample evidence of the desperate struggle in which he had been so gallantly engaged, wearing a look of deep commiseration as he gazed from her father to me, and then again at her. “Faith, I hope she’s not been hurt or frightened?”

“No, thank God!” replied the colonel huskily. “Grieving for her poor dog Ivan, who—”

“Och yes, I saw the noble baste,” interrupted Garry in his quick, enthusiastic way. “Begorrah, colonel, he fought betther than any two-legged Christian amongst us, an’ I can’t say more than that for him, sure, paice to his name!”

Before he could say anything further, and you know he was a rare one to talk when once he commenced, the skipper advanced again, holding out his hand to the colonel exclaiming— “Yes, thank God you are all right and that your little child is safe, and escaped any harm from those scoundrels, except her nerves probably being much shaken, but that she will soon recover at her age—and I told you she should be restored to you, you know. By George! Though, we’ve paid them out at last for demon’s work aboard here!”

“The devils!” ejaculated Colonel Vereker savagely, his mood changing as he recollected all he had seen and suffered at their hands. “Have you killed them all?”

“All but half a dozen of the rascals, whom we had a rare hunt after through the hold and fo’c’s’le before we could collar them. They are fast bound now, though, lashed head and feet to the mainmast bitts; and it will puzzle them to wriggle themselves loose from old Masters’ double hitches, I know. Besides which, two of our men are guarding there, with boarding-pikes in their hands and orders to run ’em through the gizzard if they offer to stir.”

“Faith,” observed Garry O’Neil reflectively, “It was as purty a bit of foighting as I ivver took a hand in, whilst it lasted!”

“But let us go and see what has become of all those chaps below—all those you mentioned as belonging to the French crew, whom you left on board with your daughter,” went on the skipper. “We saw the flash of a pistol, you remember, when we came up alongside, and somebody must have prevented those villains from getting into the cabin, or else—”

He stopped here and looked meaningly at Elsie.

“Heavens!” exclaimed the colonel, attempting to rise, but falling back on the hen-coop along the side of the bulwarks he had been using for a temporary seat, he seemed so utterly exhausted. “Ah, those brave fellows, I was almost forgetting them; but I can’t move, Señor Applegarth, or I should have gone down before this to see what had become of my old comrades; but I’m helpless, as you see.”

Elsie now lifted her head, looked up and turned towards the skipper.

“They are all wounded,” said she, clasping her hands together and with a look of fright on her face. “Two of the men—the French sailors, I mean—and the English gentleman.”

“That’s the little Britisher I told you about, who was so plucky,” explained the colonel—“Mr Johnson.”

“Well, my father,” continued the young girl, “these three rushed down the stairs into the cabin, shortly before the steamer thumped against the side of our ship, when I thought we were all going down to the bottom of the sea.”

“Yes, my child,” said the colonel encouragingly, “go on and tell us what happened next.”

“The English gentleman spoke to me and said that the terrible negroes had conquered them all on deck, but that he and the two Frenchmen had escaped from them in time, and were going to barricade the doorway leading down from above to prevent the black men from coming below and murdering us all.

“He told me, though, did the kind English gentleman, that I must not be frightened and all would come right in the end, for that they had seen a very large steamer approaching, coming quite close to us, and that they would be able, he thought, to hold out until we were all rescued. They then piled up heaps and heaps of things against the door at the foot of the stairs where the sailors remained; then the Englishman stood on the table, under the skylight, to keep the negroes from getting through there. It was the Englishman who fired at them through the glass, for he was the only one who had a pistol, and he made a hole and then through that we heard all the shrieks and the noise of the pistols; and your voice, my father, Ivan heard, and then he jumped up through the hole, making a much bigger one, and ran to your rescue, my dear, dear father.”

“But what has become of Monsieur Boisson, and Madame all this time; where were they?” asked the colonel, on Elsie thus concluding the account of what had occurred under her immediate notice, a little sob escaping her involuntarily at the mention of her poor dog’s name, and at the recollection of what she had just witnessed. “Did they do anything, my dear child to help themselves, or you?”

“No, my father,” she replied, apparently surprised at the question. “They are still in the big cabin at the end of the saloon where you left them when you went away, and, I’m afraid they are very ill indeed, for all the time the firing was going on overhead Madame was screeching and screaming, and I am sure I heard Monsieur groaning a good deal. He was doing so again just now, before I found my way upstairs to you, to find you, and to see what had happened, everything had become so suddenly still after all the noise, and—and—those—awful horrible yells of the negroes—oh! I—I—can hear them still!”

She turned quite pale when uttering the last words, words spoken with visible effort, shuddering all over and hiding her face again on her father’s shoulder.

“Faith, sor, don’t ask her any more questions,” cried Garry, “but we’d betther be sayin’ afther those poor fellows ourselves, an’ at once, too!”

“Do quickly, sir doctor,” said the colonel, “and I only wish I could come with you! but—”

“Now jist you shtop where ye are, me friend,” rejoined Garry, putting out his hand to prevent his stirring from his seat. “Sure the cap’en an’ me, with Dick Haldane here, will be enough to look afther ’em all.”

With this he made for the companion-way and descended the “stairs,” as Elsie, ignorant of nautical nomenclature, called the ladder, the skipper following close behind him.

On getting to the bottom we found the panels of the door smashed in, though of hard oak, strengthened with cross battens of the same stout wood, which showed to what fierce assault it had been subjected, the furniture piled up against it from within having duly prevented the negroes from finally forcing an entrance, as well, no doubt, as our appearance on the scene.

This barricade had, however, been now partly removed, probably to allow of little Elsie’s exit, and, quickly pitching the remaining obstacles aside, the three of us managed to squeeze ourselves inside the cabin, which was in such a state of confusion, with the long table overturned to serve as a breastwork for the gallant defenders and the settees and lockers turned away from the deck, as well as the glass of the skylight all smashed, that it looked like a veritable “Hurrah’s vest” as we sailors say.

On a pile of cushions belonging to the lounge aft—the only piece of furniture that was left intact in the place, I believe—lay the brave men who had stubbornly held the ship to the last against the mutineers.

All were covered with blood and blackened by powder and so utterly worn out from fatigue in battling throughout the night and day that had almost elapsed since the colonel had left them, besides being crippled by the injuries they had received in the fray, that they hardly moved on our entrance, though one—a little chap whom I judged to be the Englishman spoken of by the colonel and Elsie—brightened up as we bent over him, a look of satisfaction and content stealing over his drawn and haggard face, as we cauld see from the rays of the setting sun streaming down through the broken skylight, exposing the utter desolation around.

He was the first to speak.

“I’m afeard you’ve come too late for us, sirs,” said he slowly, with a deep groan of pain. “Those damned niggers have done for me, one of them giving me a dig of his knife in the ribs—did it through the doorway just now, when the fight were nearly over. You might do summat, though, for my companions here, who stood up to the darkies like Britons, in spite of them being only Frenchmen, though that ain’t their fault. But how’s the little girl? I hope she’s all right. Tell her father, if he’s alive—and I feel almost sure I heard his voice awhile ago up on deck—tell him that I kept my word, sirs, and fought for her to the last. I think I’m dying now, and—I—must—leave—off. But listen while I’ve a little breath, for I want to say something. My name is Robert Johnson, and my old mother, God bless her, lives at Camberwell, near London. You’ll find all my papers in my pocket and a letter with the address, and if any of you chances to be going back to England as I were, worse luck, you’d be doing a favour by seein’ her and letting her know why I didn’t turn up home this Christmas as I promised her. I know you will. I’m going now, I’m so tired. Good-night to you all—good-night—good—”

As he said this he gradually fell back on the cushion he was resting against, and his eyes closed.

Captain Applegarth and I both thought him dead.

Not so, however, Garry O’Neil.

“Sure, he’s ounly fainted,” exclaimed the Irishman; “run, Dick, me bhoy, an’ say if there’s sich a thing as a stooard’s pantry knockin’ about anywheres in those latituodes, wid a dhrop of water convanient. That an’ a taste of this aqua vitae here, which, the saints be praised, I took the precawshin to put in me pocket afore we shtarted on this blissid and excoitin’ skermoish, this will very soon fetch back a little loife into the plucky little beggar ag’in!”

I had no difficulty in finding the steward’s pantry and a breaker of water, with a tin dipper attached, speedily carrying some back and, by our joint ministrations, and with it bathing his face and hands and pouring some between his lips, little Mr Johnson at last opened his eyes and began to breathe.

After a time and a certain amount of patience he opened his eyes wider, and became conscious, and later on was induced to swallow down a mixture out of his own special bottle that Garry carried, and we were at last delighted to see quite a broad grin spread over his round good-natured and somewhat comical face.

“By Jingo, sir!” said he, after a pause and rather long silence, and after he had drained off the last drop of the elixir, with a sigh of gratitude that evidently came from his heart, “you’ve saved my life this time, and no mistake. I never thought I should taste a drop of good brandy again in this world.”