The Ghost Ship/Chapter Twenty Three.

Chapter Twenty Three. Within Hail.

“By George! is that so?” ejaculated the skipper, starting off with a mad clutch at his cap, which he had thrown off on to a locker close by in the heat of his excitement during the colonel’s yarn. “I’ll be on the bridge in a jiffey! Thank God for that news!”

“Hooray!” shouted Garry O’Neil, as we all immediately jumped from our seats on hearing this joyful intelligence, long though it had been in coming, even the poor colonel, sliding his bandaged leg off its supporting chair and standing on his feet, prepared to follow the skipper on deck without a moment’s delay. “Be the powers! I knew we’d overhaul them divvles before sundown! Faith, an’ I tould ye so, colonel; I tould ye so, you know I did!”

But just then an unexpected interruption arrested us as we all moved towards the companion-way to regain the deck above.

“Look here, colonel,” cried a voice from the skipper’s state room aft, where the commander of the Saint Pierre was supposed to be reposing in an almost insensible condition. “Get out of here! you are not worth being angry with.”

“Begorrah, it’s your poor fri’nd in there!” said Garry O’Neil to the colonel. “What’s the poor crayture parleyvooing about, instid of slaypin’ loike a Christian whin he’s got the chance? Sure, I’ll have to stop his jaundering there, or he’ll niver git betther!”

“Stay a moment; he’s beginning again, poor fellow,” remarked the colonel, holding up his hand.

“Listen!”

“You villains! take that!” called out the Frenchman in a louder key and in a tone of anger, as if battling with the blacks on board the Saint Pierre over again; and then, after a pause we heard a piteous cry. “My God! they are going to shoot me! Look! Look! To the rescue, colonel, quickly, quickly, to the rescue.”

“Bedad, he’s in a bad way entoirely!” said Garry, as he and the colonel, with myself at their heels, entered the after cabin, where we saw Captain Alphonse sitting up in the skipper’s cot and gesticulating frantically. “What can he be after sayin’ now, sor?”

“He is going over the boat scene on the poop of our unfortunate vessel, when the Haytian blacks, as I told you, made at him and the other sailor before I rushed up from below, too late to save him, poor fellow!” explained the colonel. “He’s calling out for help, as I suppose he did then, though I didn’t hear him!”

“It sounds moighty queer, anyhow,” continued the Irishman. “Whisht! There, he’s at it again! What does that extraordinary lingo mean now? I can’t make h’id nor tale of it, sor!”

“Hoist the flag immediately! Close furl the main topsail!” exclaimed the poor wounded man in short jerky sentences, as he sat up there in the swinging cot, with his hands tearing at the bandage that was bound round his head, looking as if he had just risen from the dead, and reminding me of a picture I once saw depicting the raising of Lazarus. His eyes were rolling, too, in wild delirium, and after gazing at us fixedly for a second or two without a sign of recognition on his pallid face, he fell back prostrate again on the mattress, crying out in a pitiful wail, “Alas, for the ship! Too late, too late, too late.”

“Heavens!” said the colonel, turning to Garry. “Can’t you do anything for him?”

“I’ll put somethin’ coolin’ on the dressin’, an’ that’ll make the poor chap’s h’id aisier,” replied the other, suiting the action to the word. “Ice, sure, ’ud be betther; but, faith, there isn’t a morsel aboard!”

Whatever he did apply, however, had a quieting influence, and presently, after tossing from side to side convulsively, Captain Alphonse closed his great staring eyes and began to snore stertorously.

“Heaven be praised!” cried Colonel Vereker. “He’s sleeping again, now!”

“Faith, an’ a good job, too, for him, poor crayture,” said Garry. “He’s in a bad way, I till you, sor! an’ he’d betther die aisy whin he’s about it, sure, than kickin’ up a row that won’t help him.”

“What!” returned the colonel. “Do you think he’s going to die?”

“Begorrah, all the docthers in the worrld wouldn’t save him!”

“My poor friend, my poor friend!” cried the colonel. “I will stay with him then, to the end, so as to soothe his last moments!”

There was evidently a struggle going on in Colonel Vereker’s mind between his desire to do his duty, as he thought, to the dying man, and his natural anxiety to be on deck participating in all the excitement of the chase after the runaway ship and the coming fight with the Haytians, when the black rascals would be called to a final account for all the misery and bloodshed they had caused.

Garry O’Neil saw this, and pooh-poohed the idea of the colonel remaining below.

“Faith, there ain’t the laste bit of good, sor, in yer stoppin’ down here at all, at all,” said he in his brisk, energetic way. “The poor chap won’t be afther stirrin’ ag’in for the next two hours or more; an’ if he does, bedad, he won’t ricognise ye, or any one ilse for that matther!”

“But, sir doctor—”

“Houly Moses! I till you, colonel, there ain’t no use in your stoppin’ another minnit!” impatiently cried the good-natured Irishman, interrupting his half-hearted expostulator. “Jist you clear out of this at once, an’ go on deck an’ say the foightin’ with those murtherin’ bleyguards. I’ll moind my paychant now till that old thaife Weston’s finished all the schraps lift in the plates an’ bottles from lunch; an’ thin, faith, he shall take charge of him an’ I’ll come up too, to say the foon. Now, be off wid ye, colonel, dear; you’ll say the poor chap ag’in afther the rumpus is over. Dick Haldane, me darlint, hind the colonel the loan of yer arrum, alannah. There, now off ye both go. Away wid ye!”

So saying, he fairly pushed us out of the cabin; and, the colonel limping by my side and using my shoulder as a crutch, as he had previously done, we both went up the companion-ladder, and gained the poop.

The scene here presented a striking contrast to that we had just left, the fresh air, bright sun, and sparkling sea all speaking of life and movement, in exchange for the stuffy atmosphere of the darkened saloon and its association of illness and approaching death.

A stiff breeze was blowing now from the southward, and running, as we were, to the northward, right before it, the skipper had ordered all our square sails forward to be set so as to take every advantage of the wind, in addition to our steam-power, the old barquey prancing away full speed ahead, with her topsails and fore canvas bellied out to their utmost extent, their leech lifting occasionally with a flicker as she outran the breeze and the clew-gallant blocks rattling as the sheets slackened and grew taut again, while the wind hummed through the canvas aloft like a thousand bees buzzing about the rigging.

The black smoke, too, was rushing up the funnel and whirling in the air overhead, uncertain which direction to take, from the speed of the vessel inclining it to trail away aft, while the stiff southerly breeze blew it forwards; so we carried it all along with us, hung up above our dog vane like an awning as we careered onwards, raising a deep furrow of swelling water on either side as we cut through the dancing sunlit waves, and leaving a long white wake astern that shone through the blue, far away behind in the distance, to where sea and sky melted into one, far away on the horizon line.

Old Masters, the boatswain, was on the poop when the colonel and I came up from below, in the very act of hauling in the patent log to ascertain our speed.

“Well,” said I, as he looked at the index of the ungainly thing, which is something of a cross between a shark hook and a miniature screw propeller. “What’s she doing, bo’sun?”

“Doing? Wot she’s a-doing on, sir?” he replied, repeating my own words and mouthing them over with much gusto. “Why, sir, she’s going sixteen knots still, and the bloomin’ old grampus has been keeping it up since four bells. She carries the wind with her, too; for jist as we bore up north awhile ago, astern the chase, I’m blessed if the breeze didn’t shift round likewise to the south’ard, keepin’ astern of us as before!”

“Where is the chase?” I asked, not being able to see forwards on account of the swelling foresail and other intervening objects. “I suppose she’s right ahead, eh?”

“No, sir. Jist come here alongside o’ me at the taffrail,” said he. “Now foller my finger, sir. Look, there she is, two points off our starboard bow. She was hull down jist now, but we’re rising her fast, sir. See, there she be right under the foreyard there!”

I looked in the direction he indicated, and could very faintly in the distance see something white like a sail, almost out of sight on the ocean ahead.

“But, Masters,” said I, having no glass with me to bring her nearer, and seeing she was too far off for me to distinguish her with the naked eye, “are you certain she’s the same craft?”

“As sartin, Master Haldane,” he answered solemnly, “aye, as sartin as that when we goes aboard her, as go aboard her we must, we shall both be a-goin’ to our death! That’s the ‘ghost-ship,’ Master Haldane, as you and I’ve seed three times afore. May I die this minute if she ain’t!”

“Die! don’t talk such nonsense, Masters.”

“It ain’t no nonsense, Master Haldane,” he retorted, and looking the picture of misery and unhappiness. “That there ship means no good to you nor me, nor to none of them as seed her afore, I knows. It’s her, sure enuff. No mortal ship could sail on like that continually since Friday, right afore the wind, and still allers be a-crossin’ our hawser, though her canvas be tore to ribbings and never a man aboard, as we’ve seed. It ain’t nat’ral, nohow. Aye, she be the ‘ghost-ship’ and no mistake,—and God help us all!”

I noticed at the moment a telescope lying on the top of the saloon skylight, which Mr Fosset must have left behind him in his haste, when he came from the bridge to hail the skipper and then hurried back to his post; so, quickly catching up the glass, I scanned the distant sail, which grew more perceptible every minute.

Yes, there was no doubt about it.

She was a full-rigged ship running before the wind, but going a bit every now and then off her course as if under no proper guidance or management, while all her sails were torn and hanging anyhow, and her spars and rigging apparently at sixes and sevens, as though she had been terribly mauled by the weather.

“For Heaven’s sake, tell me!” cried the colonel, who had approached me unobserved while I was looking through the telescope. “Tell me, is she there? Can you see her?”

“Yes, sir,” said I. “I can see her, and it’s the same ship I saw the other night. It is the Saint Pierre!”

“Ha!” he exclaimed, his black eyes flashing into a passion that made him forget his lameness, as he strode to the side of the vessel, where, resting one hand on the rail, he shook the other menacingly at the ill-fated craft, now with her hull well above the horizon. “Ah, you black devils, we’ll settle you at last!”

Meanwhile, the skipper, who had gone up to join Mr Fosset on the bridge after leaving us below so suddenly, was making his way aft again; and on the colonel turning round from the rail he found him at his back, looking over his shoulder at the ship we were approaching.

The skipper was all agog with excitement.

“By George!” he exclaimed. “We’re closing on her fast now, colonel!”

“How soon, Señor Applegarth, do you think we’ll be before we’re alongside her?”

“In about half an hour at the outside, sir, unless something gives way. We would have been up to her before if she had been lying-to; but she’s going ahead too, like ourselves, and not making bad way either, considering the state she’s in aloft, and her yawing this way and that. It is wonderful how she keeps on!”

“Oh dear! oh dear! she’s possessed, as your companion here said just now to the young Señor Haldane.”

“Oh, you mustn’t mind what the bo’sun says,” observed the skipper. “He’s chock full of the old superstitions of the sea, and makes mountains out of molehills.”

“The deuce! he’s not far wrong about the Saint Pierre, though, for if ever a ship had the devil aboard, I’m sure she has, in the shape of that villainous black ‘marquis’!”

“Then the sooner the better for us to see about ‘Scotching’ your de’il,” cried the skipper with a laugh that meant business, I knew. “I’m now going to call the hands aft and prepare for the fight, and they shall have it hot, I can tell you,” said he.

“Have you got arms enough for them, sir? Those rascals will make a stubborn resistance, and there’s a big lot of them still left in the ship, remember!”

The skipper laughed outright at this.

“Lord bless you, colonel!” said he, “the steamers of our line are fitted out in their way very like men-of-war; and I have enough rifles and cutlasses in the arm chest below to rig out more than twice the number of the crew we carry, besides revolvers for all the officers. This, however, will be short and sharp work, as we’re going to run your black devils by the beard; so I shall only serve out cutlasses.”

“But you’ll spare me a revolver, Señor Applegarth? I left mine, as you are aware, behind me,” said he with a smile, “and I should like to have another shot or two at my friend, the ‘marquis’!”

“Aye, aye, colonel, you shall have one, and a good one too, and so shall all those who know how to use a pistol properly; but, for close hand-to-hand fighting, I prefer cold steel myself.”

Colonel Vereker joined in the skipper’s grim chuckle, which suited his mood well.

“Yes, sir, that’s true,” he rejoined; “but a revolver isn’t to be sneezed at, all the same!”

“No colonel, your leg’ll bear witness to that,” said the skipper as he turned to me. “Run down quickly, Haldane, to the arm chest in my state room—here are the keys—and pick out a dozen or so cutlasses and boarding-pikes, with a revolver apiece for all on the quarter-deck, and half a dozen rounds of ammunition. You can get Weston to help you to bring the lot up here. Look smart; I want to serve them out at once, as we’re now coming up with the chase, and there’s no time to lose.”

Down I scuttled into the saloon with the skipper’s bunch of keys; and, calling the steward to help me, went into the after cabin, where Garry O’Neil still remained, wetting the bandage round the head of the French captain, and doing it too with greater delicacy of touch than the most experienced and flippant of hospital nurses.

Garry was delighted when I told him what I came about.

“Houly Moses!” he ejaculated; “why that’s the virry job for me, sure. Here, Weston, you ugly thaife of a son of a gun, come here! There’s going to be some rare foightin’ on deck prisintly; an’ as I know ye don’t loike to be afther spoilin’ that beautiful mug o’ yours, you jist sit down there, alannah, an’ moind this poor chap here till I come below ag’in, whilst I help Musther Haldane, too, with thim murtherin’ arms that give one a could chill, faith, to look at, bad cess to ’em.”

He gave me a sly wink as he said this, which was unperceived by Weston, who accepted the proposed change of duty with an alacrity that showed he had no stomach for warfare procedure, and Garry and I very speedily took up a bundle of weapons each on to the poop, laying them down close beside the skipper, who stood against the rail.

“Ah, doctor,” said the colonel, who was sitting down near by on the skylight hatchway, resting himself before the battle should begin, on seeing Garry come up the companion, “how’s my poor friend now?”

“Faith, he’s still unconshus,” replied he, handing him a big revolver with a cartridge belt attached; “ah, sure, I ’spect he’ll remain so, too, colonel, till you’ve had toime to polish off the rest of thim schoindrels we’re afther. Indade, it’s going off loike that the poor crayture will be, I’m afeard, whin it comes to the ind. I don’t think he’ll ayther spake or move ag’in in this loife.”

But Garry was mistaken in this diagnosis of his, as events turned out; but, ere he could say another word, just then as the colonel was going to make a reply to him, the skipper hammered on the deck with a marling-spike to attract attention and give a hail at the very top of his voice that made us all jump, it was so loud and unexpected.

“Ahoy there, forrad!” he shouted in stentorian tones that rang fore and aft like a trumpet. “Bo’sun, send the hands aft.”

“Say, cap’en,” sang out Mr Fosset from the bridge, “shall I call up the fellows down below in the stoke-hold, sir?”

“Aye. Ring the engine-room gong. I want every man-jack on deck that Mr Stokes can spare; tell him so.”

While old Masters was sounding his boatswain’s pipe and while busy feet were tramping aft, the men were beginning to cluster in the waist immediately below the back of the poop. And here Captain Applegarth stood stern and erect like an old lion, his cap off and his wavy grey hair fluffed out over his head by the wind. While this was happening we could hear the distant sound of the engine-room bell, and then there came a hail from Mr Fosset.

“Mr Stokes is sending up every one from below, sir,” yelled out the first mate. “He says he can manage by himself now that we’re nearly up to the chase, with the help of a couple of the other firemen; and the engineers and stokers, the whole lot of them in a batch, have volunteered to come on deck and join the boarding party.”

“That’s your sort, my hearty,” cried the skipper enthusiastically, looking down at the sea of excited faces below gazing up expectantly at his, awaiting the stirring words they knew to be coming, all having got wind of the approaching fray. “Now, men, I have summoned the lot of you aft because—well, because I’ve got something to say to you.”

“Bully for you, old man,” exclaimed one of the men, amidst a grand roar, while I could distinguish, distinctly above the other voices of the crew, Accra Prout, the mulatto cook’s laugh as he called out approvingly, “Golly, dat so, sonny!”

“Heavens!” ejaculated Colonel Vereker, seemingly, like myself, to recognise the voice at once, “who’s that?” said he sharply.

Accra Prout, who stood a head taller than any other of the men clustered round him, caught sight of the colonel as the latter cast his eyes downwards, rising from his seat and coming to the side of the skipper; and the mulatto’s eyes grew as large as saucers, while his eyeballs rolled in delight and his wide mouth extended itself from ear to ear.

“Bress de Lor’!” he cried out, with all a darkey’s emphatic enthusiasm, breaking into a huge guffaw that was almost hysterical—“bress de Lor’! it’s de massa; it’s Mass’ Vereker from de plantation, for surh!”

“Yes, it’s me, myself, sure enough, Prout; and I’m right glad to see you,” said the colonel, equally delighted. “There, Señor Applegarth, didn’t I tell you any of my old Louisianian hands would like to see me again, in spite of what I said about those infernal niggers who seized our ship?”

“Aye, you did, colonel, you did,” replied the skipper, waving his hand in the air; “but never mind that now—I’m going to speak to the crew.”

“Now, me bhoys, altogether,” cried Garry O’Neil, looking over the top of the booby-hatch over the companion-way, “three cheers for the cap’en, horray!”

“Horray!” roared the lot below with a kindred enthusiasm, “Horray! Horray!”

“We’re almost within hail now of the chase, sir,” sang out Mr Fosset from the bridge when the echo of the last deafening cheer had died away; “I’m going to slow down, so that we can sheer up alongside.”

“That’s just what I was waiting for,” said the skipper in answer to this. “Now, men, you see that ship ahead of us?”

“Aye,” called out the foremost hand, who had before spoken—the usual leader, and the wit of the fo’c’s’le—“the ghost-ship, cap’en.”

“Well, ghost-ship, devil-ship, or whatever she may be, my lads, we’re going to board her and rescue a young lady, a child in age, the daughter of my friend, Colonel Vereker here, and a lot of white men like yourselves, who are now at the mercy of a gang of black demons who have murdered the rest of the passengers and crew and taken possession of the vessel. Are you going to stand by me, lads?”

His answer was another deafening cheer, heartier and louder even than the first.

“Ah, I thought I could reckon on your help,” cried the skipper in a tone of proud satisfaction, glancing round at the colonel. “I have got your tools handy for you, too, my lads; and if you will come up to the poop in single file by the port-ladder, going down again by the starboard gangway, each shall be supplied in turn. Mr O’Neil, please serve out the cutlasses and boarding-pikes. Now, my men, way aloft there! Single file, and no crushing, mind, and we’ll get the job done all the quicker!”

Ere he had finished speaking the arming of the men had already begun, and within a very few minutes the cutlasses and long boarding-pikes had all been distributed, every man having some weapon.

“Now, bo’sun, pipe the men to their stations,” sang out the skipper, who appeared to have already matured his plan of action. “Starboard watch forrad, port watch aft, and all the stokers and firemen amidships, under the bridge. Have a couple of hands, too, in the forechains, with a hawser and grapnel, ready to make fast to the ship when we come alongside her.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” hailed back Masters. “Starboard watch ahoy! Away forrads with you along o’ me!”

Our engines had already slackened speed; and, the helm being put down, we came up to the wind, to leeward of the ship and not a half cable’s length away from her, broadside-on.

“Stand by there, forrad,” shouted the skipper. “Ship ahoy there! Surrender, or we’ll run you aboard.”

A wild savage yell came back in reply from a number of half-naked negroes who were mustered on the after part of the vessel, as well as on the forecastle, not a single white man being visible, while her Tricolour flag—so conspicuous before, and which I fancied having seen but half an hour or so previously when looking at her through the telescope—was now no longer to be seen.

Could our worst fears have been realised?

Another savage yell almost confirmed the thought. “Heavens!” exclaimed Colonel Vereker, rendered almost frantic with grief and excitement, and noticing the appalling evidences of the Haytians’ triumph, while we stared aghast at each other. “My poor darling child, and those brave fellows I left behind, where are they all; where are they? For God’s sake find them! Alas! alas! those black devils have murdered them all.”