The Ghost Ship/Chapter Twenty Two.

Chapter Twenty Two. All Adrift.

“Aye, colonel,” sang out the skipper, as if in response to these words of the French captain, “to avenge him; that’s what all of us here have sworn to do, I know, for I can answer for them as if I were speaking for myself. Yes, and so we will, too. We’ll avenge him—the poor fellow whom they butchered. We will, by George!”

“Begorrah!” exclaimed Garry O’Neil. “You can count on me for one on that job, as I tould ye before, and I don’t care how soon we begin it, cap’en!”

“And me too,” put in old Mr Stokes, again becoming very enthusiastic. “The whole lot must be punished, sir, when we catch them!”

“I thought so,” said the skipper, looking round at us and then turning to the colonel with a proud air. “You see, sir, we’re all unanimous; for I can answer for this lad Haldane, here, though the poor chap’s too bashful to speak for himself!”

“I know what the gallant youth can do already,” said the other, looking at me kindly as I held up my head like the rest, but with a very red face. “Thank you, gentlemen all, for your promises. Well, then, on my friend Captain Alphonse putting the matter in the way he did, to make an end of my story, I held back, and all that day—it was last Saturday—we remained on the defensive, we five holding the after part of the ship, and the Haytians and mutineers of our crew the forecastle. All of us, though, kept on the watch; they looking out for land, we for help in response to our signal flag half-mast high.

“But neither party saw what they looked out and longed for; no corner of land on the horizon gratified the desire of their eyes, no ship hove in sight to bless ours with the promise of relief!

“The next morning, Sunday, it came on to blow, and our vessel was taken aback and nearly foundered. Fortunately, though, the mutineers not interfering, most of them being seasick forwards, Captain Alphonse and Basseterre started down into the waist to cast off all the sheets and halliards they could reach, letting everything fly; whereupon we drove before the wind and so escaped any mishap from this source, at all events!

“Probably on account of their prostration from the effects of sea-sickness, our enemies did not molest us in any way throughout the day; but towards the morning my little Elsie came up the companion-way in a state of great terror, saying she heard a sort of scratching in the hold below, and that Ivan, her dog, was growling as if he smelt somebody trying to get in, though we could not hear the dog on deck from the noise of the wind and sea, and a lot of loose ropes and swinging spars which were making a terrible row aloft.

“I went down at once with her, and without even taking the trouble to listen I could clearly distinguish the sound of tapping beneath the cabin deck, despite the confused jabbering of Monsieur Boisson, and the shrill tones of his wife.

“I knelt down then and put my ear to the planking, Monsieur Boisson watching me with his bottle-brush sort of hair standing straight up on end with fright, and Madame, who I thought had more courage than he, though such, evidently, I now saw was not the case—well, she was rolling on one of the saloon settees in a fit of hysterics, screaming and yelling at the top of her voice.

“‘Who’s there?’ I called out in French. ‘Are you one of those Haytians, or a friend and one of us? Answer! I will know who it is when you speak!’

“‘I am a friend!’ came back instantly in Spanish. ‘Let me out, sir; I am nearly stifled down here. The three of us who were locked in the main hatch have worked through the cargo and broken the after bulkhead, making our way here, but we can’t get out of this, for the trap is fastened down, sir!’

“It was Pedro Gomez, the steward, who had gone down into the hold with two of the white sailors just before the outbreak of the mutiny to obtain some salt pork and other food for the use of the very scoundrels who had imprisoned them, and who, probably, believed they had all three died by this time, like poor Cato, only through suffocation, instead of being murdered as he was!

“Needless to say, I immediately drew back the bolts of the hatchway cover leading down into the after-hold, which was just under the flooring of little Elsie’s cabin, and released the three, overjoyed not only at finding alive those whom we had thought dead, but doubly so at having such a welcome addition to our small force of five—I couldn’t rely upon that coward Boisson—opposed as we were to the thirty, whom the enemy still mustered, after deducting those we shot.

“Why, with this adventitious aid, we could now attack the cursed wretches in their stronghold, instead of our merely remaining on the defensive, waiting for them to assail us, as we had been forced to do all along!

“I thought it best, however, not to let the Haytian scoundrels know of this increase to our strength until the morrow, believing that if we waited till daylight we might be able to take them more completely then by surprise and ensure a victory; for in the dark we might get mixed up and, firing at random, hit our friends as well as our foes. So I went up above and spoke to Captain Alphonse, who agreed with me about it, and we planned a pleasant little fête for the morning.

“This broke auspiciously enough, the sun rising on a tolerably calm sea, while the strong wind of the previous evening had graduated down to a gentle breeze from the south-west.

“But hardly had we made all our arrangements as to the distribution of arms and settling our form of attack, when our plans were upset by the villainous ‘marquis’ advancing aft with a pistol in his hand, supported by another of the scoundrels, a negro like himself from Port au Prince, and black as a coal, but a regular giant in size, and who likewise held a revolver.

“Heavens! They had previously been without firearms, wherein lay our superiority in spite of numbers; but these weapons now put us almost on level terms, notwithstanding the reinforcement we had received.

“‘Where could they have got ’em, sir?’ said little Mr Johnson to me, he and Captain Alphonse and myself being in counsel together at the time, it being the watch below of Don Miguel and Basseterre and the sailor Duval, all three of whom were asleep in the wheel-house, recruiting for their night duty. ‘They didn’t have no firearms yesterday, colonel, I’ll swear. Do you think they’ve murdered the mate and bo’sun forrads, and robbed ’em?’

“As a similar idea flashed through my mind, that devil, the ‘marquis,’ answered the little Englishman’s question as I, too, had feared!

“‘Oh! my friend,’ he called out, as I covered him with my revolver from my rampart behind the poop-rail on the top of the ladder, where a roll of tarpaulin served us for shelter. ‘Don’t be too handy with your pistol. We have got firearms too, now. Stop a minute. I have got something to say to you.’

“‘You had better make haste with your speech, then,’ said I. ‘My finger is itching to pull the trigger, and you know, to your cost, I’m a dead shot!’

“‘You will not do much good by killing me,’ he retorted with that mocking hyena laugh of his, which always exasperated me so much. ‘I want to tell you that we know you have got three more men with you now than you had yesterday, for we searched the hold this morning and found the nest empty and the birds flown. But recollect, my friend, we can get to you aft through the cargo, in the same way as those white-livered wretches have done!’

“‘Bah! I’m not afraid of your threats, you black devil,’ I replied, although my heart went down to my boots at the thought of my darling child being caught unawares and being left to the mercy of such demons. ‘We have scuttled the after part of the ship, and at the least noise being heard in the hold we will let in the water and drown you all like rats in a hole, and see how you like that!’

“This idea, which occurred to me on the spur of the instant, evidently impressed the scoundrel, for I could see a change come over his ugly face.

“‘Let us make a compromise,’ he suggested after a pause, during which he whispered to his companion, the giant negro, both keeping much behind the mainmast. ‘You can take that boat you have there at the stern, the lot of you, if you like, and leave us the ship.’

“‘My word, that’s a very good proposal, marquis,’ said Captain Alphonse, coming to my side. ‘You won’t interfere with us, I suppose, if we go away and give you absolute power to do what you please with the Saint Pierre, eh?’

“‘Assuredly not, my friend; we promise that,’ eagerly replied the scoundrel, deceived by the manner of my poor friend. ‘You can take anything you like of your personal effects too; you and the other whites.’

“‘Ah, but my friend, you are too good!’ said Captain Alphonse, firing quickly as he spoke at the ‘marquis,’ who had incautiously exposed himself, thinking we had been gulled by his proposal and were ready to fall into the trap he had cunningly prepared for us. ‘Take that, you pig, for my answer!’

“His revolver gave out a sharp crack, and simultaneously with the report, the other’s pistol fell from his hand, the scoundrel’s elbow being shattered by the shot.

“Ere I could send a shot in the same direction to finish him off, the big negro, who had accompanied him to the front, instantly dragged back the ‘marquis,’ howling with rage and pain, behind the shelter of the mainmast; and then, picking up his revolver for him, the two of them blazed amongst us pretty securely from that retreat, without, however, doing any damage to our side. A bullet of mine, though, flattened the big negro’s nose a little more than Nature had already done for him, and which did not improve his beauty, as you can well believe.

“We kept on popping away at them whenever we saw we had a shot, the whole of this day; well, that was only yesterday, but appears ages ago to me, sirs! We kept on firing without materially diminishing their strength, but they only replied feebly to our fire, with an occasional shot fired at intervals, making up by their shouting and demoniacal yells for their failure to harm us more effectively.

“From this we became convinced that they were obliged to husband their ammunition, having no more cartridges beyond those still remaining in the chambers of the revolvers they were using, which had been loaded when served out to Monsieur Henri and the boatswain, to whom the weapons originally belonged. There was, likewise, little doubt but that the mutineers had robbed those poor fellows, after murdering them like poor Cato, in the forecastle, as the little Englishman had surmised.

“Towards sunset, later on in the afternoon—last night that was—Señor Applegarth, remember, we sighted your vessel in the distance.

“Heavens! She looked to us in our desperate strait as an angel of mercy might appear to the spirits of the damned in hell; and, at once, the thought of abandoning our accursed ship, which that fiend of a black ‘marquis’ unwillingly suggested, rapidly matured itself into a resolve.

“But our intentions in carrying out this determination were very different to his, for we believed that with your help we should the sooner be able to overcome the rascally gang, and re-conquer the vessel we might be compelled ere long to surrender, all of us now being pretty well worn out with the struggle!

“‘This is grand! this is magnificent!’ cried Captain Alphonse, when I unfolded this scheme to him; for, sirs, I may say with pardonable pride, it was my plan entirely. ‘It is good tactique to beat the retreat sometimes in war. They retreat that they may the more easily advance!’

“Don Miguel was also of a like opinion, and so was the little Englishman, Mr Johnson, whose snobbishness had by this time been completely put in the shade by his manly pluck and straightforwardness; while, as for Basseterre, the mate, and the French sailors, they implicitly believed all that Captain Alphonse approved of must infallibly be right!

“Our first idea was to attract your attention without letting the Haytians see what we were up to, as, to the best of our belief, they had no inkling of your proximity; so we were puzzling our brains how to let you learn our need in some quiet way, when little Mr Johnson suggested our burning a devil, composed of wet gunpowder piled up in the form of a cone. This was accordingly done, and the ‘devil,’ when lit, placed on the top of the wheel-house, all the rest of those around discharging their revolvers in rapid succession at the rascals on the forecastle to take off their attention while the firework fizzed and flared up.

“This signal, however, sirs, did not appear to be observed by your vessel.”

“It was, though,” interposed the skipper. “We thought you were burning a blue light to let us read your name astern, but you were too far off for that!”

“Ah! we did not know that, and the failure discouraged us,” replied the colonel. “Still, whether we were observed or not, we noticed your steamer was lying-to, and we made up our minds to try and reach her if possible, should we be able to get out of the Saint Pierre before those rascally blacks got wind of our scheme and tried to prevent our leaving.

“So we set about our preparations forthwith.

“The four French sailors were ordered to prepare the boat which hung from the stern davits and to get it ready for lowering, it being now dark enough to conceal their movements, while Captain Alphonse and Basseterre kept guard over the approach to the poop on our side, and Don Miguel and the Englishman defended the other ladder leading up from the lower deck.

“Leaving these at their respective stations, I went down into the saloon, accompanied by Pedro Gomez, the steward, to procure some tinned meats and biscuits, with some barricoes of water and other things to provision the boat, intending also to warn Monsieur and Madame Boisson of our contemplated departure; not forgetting also, you may be sure, to make every arrangement for the safety of my child, who, with the dog, her constant companion, had remained below with the ex-milliner and her husband, though these two had retired to their cabin, whence I could not get them to stir, either by threat of being left behind or any entreaty. No, they were both as obstinate as mules in their cowardice and foolish fears!

“Madame declared they had been ‘betrayed,’ and asserted they could ‘die but once’; while monsieur, ‘le brave Hercule,’ on his part, said he ‘washed his hands of all responsibility.’ It was not his affair, he considered himself perfectly satisfied, and gave me to understand he would not interfere on either side, except, I expect, the victorious one!

“Finding all remonstrances in vain, I was just going to force them away against their will, when suddenly there came a loud shout from the deck above, and the hasty tramp of feet overhead, which was at once responded to by Madame Boisson with a shriek at the top of her voice, while monsieur cursed everybody in a whining voice.

“Telling Elsie to stop where she was until I returned for her, I rushed up the companion-way, followed by Pedro Gomez, only to find everything all but lost!

“The French sailors, it seems, so Mr Johnson told me afterwards in a few hurried words of explanation, had ‘got into a fog’ over the falls of the boat they had been sent to lower, and seeing the clumsy way they were setting to work at the job, both Basseterre and Captain Alphonse thoughtlessly left their post to show the men the proper way to do the task ordered. Alas! though, in a second, while the whole lot of them all had their backs turned to the Haytians, these demons, grasping the opportunity in a moment, rushed up on the poop by the port-ladder way, now unguarded!

“Captain Alphonse, hearing the noise of their approach, faced about, fronting his foes like a tiger at bay, and drew his revolver from his belt.

“But, sir, he was too late!

“Ere he could put up his hand to guard himself, for I could see it all in an instant, as I emerged from the companion-hatchway, the giant negro, who had abandoned his pistol for a hand-spike, brought down this fearful weapon with a tremendous thwack on the side of my poor friend’s head with the result you have seen.”

“Aye, faith,” said Garry O’Neil. “It must have been a terrible blow, sure, sor!”

“It was,” replied the colonel grimly. “It knocked him down like a bullock, and then, before I could interfere, the big brute took up Captain Alphonse, all bleeding and senseless as he was, but still breathing, and chucked him into the sea.

“That was the negro’s last act, however; for as he broke into a huge guffaw of triumph over the ghastly deed I fired my revolver, the barrel of which I shoved almost into his mouth and blew his brains out!”

“Hooray!” exclaimed the impulsive Garry O’Neil on hearing this. “Faith, I ounly wish, colonel, I had been there with ye. Begorrah, I’d have made ’em hop at it, sure, I bet, sor!

“After that,” continued the narrator, we had some stiff work for five minutes or so, but by keeping the skylight between us, the continuous fire of our four revolvers at such short range proved too much for them, and we succeeded in driving the blacks off the poop. The whole lot of them retreated back to the forecastle, leaving five of their number dead about the decks, besides half a dozen or so of the others badly wounded; all of us, fortunately, escaping with only a few slight bruises from blows from the Haytian’s clubs and hand-spikes—the only weapons they used.

“All save poor Captain Alphonse, that is; for it was only when the coast was clear of the scoundrels and the poop safe again that I had time to think of him.

“Pedro Gomez, remaining with Basseterre and one of the sailors, to guard the port-ladder way with their six-shooters loaded and levelled in front, commanding all approach aft, in the same way as the mate and poor Captain Alphonse had done in the first instance, I went off with all haste to the stern gallery to see what had become of my unfortunate friend, taking the other three sailors with me, for though taking part in the general scrimmage when the blacks invaded the poop so unexpectedly, Don Miguel and Johnson had stuck valiantly to their post by the starboard rail, and so I had no fear of another surprise on now proceeding aft.

“It was still light enough to distinguish objects near, and as I looked over the side, what was my astonishment to see his body yet afloat, not far from the ship. Aye, sir, there he was; and, stranger still, as my eye caught sight of him, the poor fellow, unconsciously, no doubt, raised one hand out of the dark water with a quick, convulsive action, just as though he were beckoning to me and imploring me to save him!

On noticing this—a fact, of course, which showed plainly enough that he was still alive—without thinking of what I was doing, I jumped on a projecting bollard and dived from the deck of the ship into the sea.

“I soon rose to the surface, when, swimming up to the almost lifeless body in a few strokes, I caught hold of a portion of the poor fellow’s clothing and commenced turning it towards the stern of the vessel just underneath the davits, whence the boat we had been preparing for our flight was suspended all ready for lowering, and with the French sailors standing by above.

“‘Look sharp!’ I sang out to them from the water. ‘Look sharp, there! Lower away!’

“In their haste and flurry, however, the men mistook my order, and thinking I had said ‘cut away,’ instead of ‘lower away,’ one of the fools, who held a cutlass he had caught up to defend himself with when those infernal niggers rushed at us, the confounded idiot made a sweeping cut at the falls from which the boat hung, severing them at one blow!

“Down came the little craft at once with a splash, almost on the top of me; and though she managed to ship some water through her sudden immersion, she quickly righted herself on an even keel, right side up.”

“By George, I’d have keel-hauled ’em wrong side down!” cried the skipper, out of all patience at hearing of this piece of gross stupidity. “The damned awkward lubbers!”

“Yes, sir; French sailors are not like English ones, nor do they resemble our American shellbacks, who do know a thing or two!” replied the colonel. “Well, gentlemen, to make an end of my story, I may tell you that I had some difficulty in lifting the body of poor Captain Alphonse into the boat when I had clutched hold of the gunwale; but after a time I succeeded in getting him into the bows, rolling him over the side anyhow.

“Then I tried to get in myself by the stern, and had just flung one of my legs over when that villain the black ‘marquis,’ catching sight of me from the forecastle, ahead of which the boat somehow or other had drifted by this time, fired at me with probably the last cartridge he had left in his pistol, and which the devil no doubt had reserved for me.”

“Be jabers!” exclaimed Garry O’Neil, unable to keep silent any longer. “The baste! An’, sure, that’s how you came by that wound in the groin, faith?”

“Yes, sir, doctor. The shot struck me when I was all of a heap, and where it went heaven only knows, till you probed the wound and extracted the bullet.

“I must have tumbled into the boat while in a state of insensibility, like poor Captain Alphonse, for I do not recollect anything that occurred immediately after I felt the sting of the shot as I was hit, and when I came to myself again I was horrified to find I was far away from the ship, which I could only dimly discern in the distance.

“But this did not daunt me at first, for I thought I should be able to row alongside again and get taken aboard through one of the stern ports; but, will you believe it, when I came to search the boat for the oars, which Basseterre had expressly told those clumsy sailors in my hearing to be sure to put into the boat the very first thing of all, can you credit it? lo and behold, not a scull nor oar was in her; not a stick of any sort or kind whatever!”

“The lubbers!” said Captain Applegarth, indignant again as he paced backwards and forwards impatiently, casting an occasional hurried glance at the “tell-tale” suspended from the deck above the saloon table, the shifting dial of which showed we were now changing course to the westward. “The damned lubbers; the damn—”

The colonel here broke in with— “This discovery, I think, broke my heart,” cried he, heaving a heavy sigh. “It took the last flickering gleam of hope away from me, and I sank back again to the bottom of the boat, appalled and terrified in my mind by the reflections and thoughts of what might happen to my darling child and those others whom I had left on board the Saint Pierre, deprived at one fell blow of both Captain Alphonse and myself.

“When daylight dawned after a night that seemed a century long, so full of pain and awful thought it was to me, I saw the Saint Pierre low down on the horizon to the westward of where I and my poor friend, Captain Alphonse, were drifting on the desert sea. The sight of the ship again, even in the distance, and the warmth of the sun’s bright beams, which made the stagnant blood circulate in my veins once more, gave me hope and renewed courage, for I recollected and thought that after all, there were eight white men still left on board the ill-fated vessel to keep possession of her and defend my little one—eight good men and true, not counting that dastardly coward Boisson, who was skulking below!

“But, sir, the wind and tide wafted the Saint Pierre away beyond my vision; and—and—sirs, the—the end of it all you all know better than I can tell you!”

“Aye,” put in the skipper, “we saw your boat adrift—at least, old Masters did—I’ll give him the credit for that. Then we picked you up, and here you are!”

Hardly had the skipper uttered these words, completing the colonel’s story, when Mr Fosset suddenly poked his head through the skylight over the after end of the saloon, the hatch of which opened out on the deck of the poop above.

Nor was the first mate merely satisfied with the abrupt intrusion of his figurehead into our midst, for he rattled the glass of the skylight in no very gentle fashion at the same time, the better, I suppose, to attract our attention, though we were all staring open-mouthed at him already, all startled by his unexpected appearance on the scene.

But he rattled the glass all the same as he looked down upon us, none the less; aye, all the more, rattled it with a will, frightening us all!

“Hi! Cap’en, Cap’en Applegarth!” he sang out at the very top of his voice, as excited as you please. “That ship’s in sight! the ship’s in sight, at last, sir. She’s hull down to leeward about seven miles off! But we’re overhauling her fast now, sir, hand over hand!”