For Treasure Bound Part 11

Some three or four and twenty corpses lay there, with the blood still slowly oozing in a few instances from wounds in various parts of their bodies.

The wounds were mostly inflicted by cutla.s.ses and pistol-shots; but two of the bodies, apparently those of officers, had the heads almost severed from the trunks, the gashes having been evidently inflicted by a keener weapon than a ship's cutla.s.s. These bodies had the arms lashed tightly behind the back.

Too horror-stricken to speak a word, I walked aft, Bob following me, and entered the cabin, which was on deck, and from which I thought I heard a groan issuing. On entering, the first object I saw was the body of a young man, about four-and-twenty years of age, lying close across the doorway, and covered with wounds. His left arm was almost completely cut through; a long gash had laid his forehead open from above the right temple to the left eyebrow; a pistol-bullet had entered his forehead nearly fair between the eyes; and blood had evidently flowed copiously from his right breast. This body lay across three others, dressed in the usual attire of seamen.

On a sofa, which stretched entirely across the after-part of the cabin, lay the body of a young girl; and lastly, under the cabin-table, lay another body, from which, whilst we stood gazing in speechless horror at these evidences of diabolical atrocity, a faint groan issued.

Bob a.s.sisted me to draw the sufferer from under the table; and we then saw that he was an old man, grey-haired, and dressed in fine blue cloth garnished with gilt b.u.t.tons, and a strip of gold lace round the cuffs of the jacket; no doubt the master of the vessel.

The cabin had, notwithstanding the ghastly appearance it presented, been the scene of a wild carouse, for the table was covered with gla.s.ses and wine and spirit bottles, and broken bottles and gla.s.ses littered the floor. I searched among the contents of the table until I found a bottle only partly empty, and from this I poured out a gla.s.s of its contents, which proved to be port, and managed with considerable difficulty to get a small quant.i.ty of the wine down the wounded man's throat. The skylight was open, and the air, coming down through it in a cool gentle breeze, a.s.sisted the wine in restoring him to consciousness.

He opened his eyes, and gazed round him vacantly for a moment or so, and then memory returned, and he burst violently into tears. We soothed him as well as we could, a.s.suring him that we were friends, and that we would not leave him; and in a minute or two he recovered strength and composure enough to speak.

"Thank you, gentlemen, thank you," said he, "but my time here is very short, and your well-meant efforts for my relief are not only useless, but they also increase my suffering. You are, I presume, from some ship which has come up with us since those fiends left. Kindly prop me up a little higher on the sofa, gentlemen, if you please, and I will endeavour to tell you what has happened before I pa.s.s away."

We did so; and as we were making his position as easy as we could for him, his eye fell upon the body of the young girl, and once more his tears burst forth, mingled with prayers for her, and the most bitter curses upon her destroyers.

He raised one hand to his face as though to brush his tears away, and we then noticed for the first time--horror upon horror!--that his fingers had all been cut, or rather _hacked_ out, at the knuckle-joints, the wounds still slowly bleeding.

He saw our looks of compa.s.sion, and said, as if in reply:

"Ah, gentlemen, willingly would I have submitted to be torn limb from limb by the demons, had they but spared my poor Rose--my darling, my only daughter."

After another short pause, he began:

"It was about midnight, last night, that we noticed a sail ahead of us, which was duly reported. There was not very much wind at the time, and she did not near us until about six bells. As she closed with us, her movements became so suspicious that I ordered the arm-chest on deck, called all hands, and served out the pistols and cutla.s.ses to them.

"Our suspicions were very shortly confirmed, for when she was within a cable's length of us she sheered suddenly alongside, and about fifty men leaped from her on to our deck. Our poor fellows gave them a warm reception; but they were all quickly cut down, and in about three minutes the pirates had the ship. They immediately began to plunder her, and a band of the most ruffianly of them, headed by their captain, made for the cabin. Seeing that all was lost, my son--his body lies at the door there--and I rushed in here, to make a desperate stand in defence of my daughter.

"The poor fellow killed three of them, whilst I severely wounded others; but he was shot down, and I fell, exhausted with the wounds I had already received. My poor girl was soon discovered and dragged from her berth.

"The chief then questioned me as to our cargo, where we were from, and so on; and believing that treasure was concealed somewhere in the ship, he mutilated me thus," holding up his fingerless hands, "to force me to reveal its hiding-place. We had none, but he would not be convinced; and when my daughter also denied the existence of any treasure on board, the villain deliberately shot her before my eyes!

"They then ransacked the cabin, turned out the lockers, and drank and sang, until the mate, I suppose, of the pirate came in and reported that everything of value was transferred to the brig; when the leader--whom I once or twice heard addressed as Johnson,"--Bob and I started and looked at each other expressively--"ordered the ship to be scuttled, and for all hands but those employed on the work to return to the brig. They then left the cabin; and, about half an hour afterwards, I believe, they left the ship. She cannot--float ver--very much--longer; but I shall-- shall be--gone before--"

His voice had been gradually growing weaker and weaker as he approached the end of his narrative, and now failed altogether. I tore open the front of his shirt to ascertain if his heart still beat, and now saw that he had received, in addition to other wounds, a shot through the chest.

There was no blood; but he no doubt bled internally. I could detect not the faintest flutter of the heart, so we laid him gently down on the sofa. As we did so, a small stream of blood trickled out of his mouth, he sighed heavily, and his jaw dropped.

Seeing that he was dead, we left the cabin, and stepped out once more into the bright sunshine. We noticed that, even during the short time we had been on board, the vessel had settled considerably in the water.

It was evidently quite time we were off; but we first went all round the deck, examining carefully each body, to see if any one exhibited the least sign of life; but all were utterly beyond the reach of our help.

We accordingly cast _off_, and returned on board the _Water Lily_, making all the sail we could, to get as speedily as possible away from the scene of such diabolical atrocities.

We were about four miles distant from the ship, when we observed her roll once or twice slowly and heavily; her stern rose, and, her bows disappearing beneath the water, she gradually became almost perpendicular, when she paused for a moment and then sank gently out of sight.

The moment that Johnson's name was mentioned, the same idea flashed into both our minds; that this was the same man, and probably the same ship, of which we had so lately heard. The captain spoke of the pirate vessel as a brig; and we felt no manner of doubt that she was the _Albatross_.

So, then, these men,--the men who had showed such base treachery to my father,--were still at large, and in full prosecution of their villainous designs. And not only so, but they were in the same quarter of the globe as ourselves, and manifestly at no very great distance.

We felt no difficulty whatever now in attaching a very different and much more sinister significance to the charred fragments of wreck we had lately pa.s.sed. Our little craft would of course be but a poor prize to these rascals; but since they seemed so to luxuriate in cruelty, it behoved us to give them as wide a berth as possible.

The presence of this craft, and that, too, in our immediate vicinity, was a source of the greatest anxiety to us; so much so, that we took in our gaff-topsail, and housed our topmast, to show but a low spread of canvas; and one or other of us remained posted at the mast-head all day, on the look-out, so as, if possible, to sight her before being seen ourselves, should it happen that we were both proceeding in the same direction, or on such courses as would bring us together.

We maintained this ceaseless watch for the pirate-brig for four days, when, judging from the experience we had already obtained of our sailing powers in fine weather as compared with those of other vessels that we had fallen in with, we came to the conclusion that all immediate danger of a _rencontre_ with her was past; and we accordingly relaxed our vigilance, and allowed ourselves some rest, which, by this time, we greatly needed.

About noon on the seventh day after boarding the ship scuttled by the pirates (the name of which I forgot to mention was _the Ma.s.sachusetts_, of New York), land appeared ahead. It was the Falkland group of barren and desolate islands in the vicinity of Cape Horn. As we had been expecting, the wind now drew round from the westward, fresh, though not so much so as to prevent our showing a jib-headed gaff-topsail to it.

Under this sail the little _Water Lily_ made most excellent way; going a good eight knots through the water, close-hauled, and against a very respectable head-sea. As the day drew on, the wind freshened; and, though we carried on as long as we dared, wishing to get round the dreaded Cape as quickly as possible, we were obliged at sunset to take our topsail in, in order to save our topmast.

By breakfast-time next morning it became necessary to further reduce our canvas, and we accordingly took down a reef in our mainsail. The question now arose whether it would be better to go round outside of everything, or to attempt the Straits of Magellan. We hove the little craft to, and went below and carefully examined the chart; discussing, as we did so, the comparative advantages and disadvantages of the two routes.

Bob had experience of both; and he seemed to feel that in the present state of the weather, and with the wind as it was, we were likely to make a quicker pa.s.sage by going on to the southward, and pa.s.sing round the Horn. I was of the same opinion, by no means liking the intricacies of the navigation of the Straits, or the violent tides which our sailing directions told us swept through them.

We accordingly filled away again, carrying on, notwithstanding the still freshening breeze, until the little _Water Lily_ seemed alternately to threaten diving to the bottom with us or taking flight altogether into the air. We were nearly blinded by the copious showers of spray which flew over us, and our mainsail was wet to its very peak; yet it was a real pleasure to see the ease and lightness with which the boat skimmed over the now formidable and angry sea.

About four bells in the morning watch, we pa.s.sed within three miles of the easternmost end of Staten Island. An hour later, the breeze freshened upon us so fiercely that we saw it would be dangerous to trifle with it any longer; so we hauled down our mainsail and stowed it; and bent and set the trysail in its place, single-reefed. This change proved a very great relief to the little craft, the sway and leverage of the heavy main-boom having made her plunge tremendously; whereas, now, she went along without shipping a drop of water beyond the spray which she of course still continued to throw over herself.

It was whilst we were busy shifting our after canvas that the little _Lily_ experienced perhaps one of the most narrow escapes of the whole voyage. We were too much occupied with our work to keep a very bright look-out; indeed, we considered that, beyond the state of the weather, there was nothing to demand our attention.

We had just completed the bending of the trysail, when away to windward of us, not more than a quarter of a mile distant, we observed a large ship running down directly upon us before the wind, under topgallant stunsails.

The _Lily_ was almost stationary at the time; and the ship was heading as straight as she possibly could for us. How the trysail went up, it is impossible for me to say; we pulled like demons, and it seemed to rise instantaneously into its place, fully set. I sprang aft, and put the helm hard up, to gather way; and we had just begun to draw through the water, when the ship took a sheer as though to cross our bows. I kept the tiller jammed hard over, and eased away the trysail sheet, intending to wear, when the ship took another sheer directly towards us.

She was now close aboard of us, and not a soul could I see on the look- out. Bob rushed aft, with his eye on the ship's bowsprit, evidently prepared for a spring; whilst I shifted the tiller and flattened in the trysail sheet once more. That saved us. The cutter luffed just in time, and shot literally from beneath the ship's bows. So close were we, that had the stranger been _pitching_ instead of _'scending_ at the moment, her jib-boom-end must have pa.s.sed through the peak of our trysail.

It may seem to the uninitiated an easy matter to keep out of an approaching ship's way, by simply observing the precise direction in which she is steering; but, as a matter of fact, a ship, when running before the wind, sails in anything but a straight line, _sheering_ first one way and then another, and it is quite impossible for a spectator to judge with accuracy in which direction she will sheer at a given moment; hence the danger in which we so unexpectedly found ourselves.

CHAPTER NINE.

A CAPE HORN GALE.

We stood on to the southward and westward during the remainder of that day, the wind continuing still to freshen, and the sea getting up with most fearful rapidity. The gla.s.s fell slowly too, and there appeared to be every prospect of our getting a taste of the quality of the weather for which Cape Horn is so notorious.

As the sun set, the veil of cloud-wrack which had obscured the heavens all day was rent asunder in the western quarter, and we caught a glimpse of the great luminary hanging upon the verge of the horizon like a ball of molten copper.

His level beams shot for a few moments across the broad expanse of the heaving and wildly-leaping waters, tinging the wave-crests immediately in his wake with deep blood-red, whilst all around elsewhere the angry ocean was darkest indigo. A few rays shot upward, gleaming wildly among the flying scud, and then the orb of day sank into the ocean, shooting abroad as he did so a sudden baleful crimson glare, which gradually died out in the gloom of increasing storm and coming night.

Bob stood by my side watching the wild scene I have so feebly described, and as the sun disappeared, he turned to me and remarked:

"My eyes, Harry! what d'ye think of that, lad? To my mind it needs no prophet to tell us with that afore our eyes that we're booked for a reg'lar thorough-bred Cape Horn gale of wind; and my advice as chief- mate of this here barkie is, that we makes her just as snug as we knows how, for, depend upon it, afore morning we shall have as thorough a trial of her seagoin' qualities as we're likely to want for many a day to come."

"My own idea, Bob," replied I; "I have seldom seen a wilder sunset, and if it does not mean wind, and plenty of it too, all my weather-lore must go for nothing, and I shall have to turn to and learn everything over afresh."

"Ay, ay! you may say that," returned he, "and I the same; but we've both knocked about too many years at sea to make any mistake in our reading when Natur' opens so plain a page of her book for us as yon; so the sooner we turns to the better, say I, or we shall have the darkness upon us afore we're ready for it. Thank G.o.d, we've plenty of sea-room; so let's rouse up that floating-anchor contrivance of yourn, my lad, for, depend upon it, if ever the _Lily_ is likely to need the consarn, she will to-night."

This floating-anchor I will describe for the benefit of those who may not have seen such a thing, for it is a most useful affair, and no small craft should undertake a long cruise without one. Ours was formed of two flat bars of iron, each ten feet in length, riveted together in the centre in such a way that they would either fold flat one upon the other (for convenience of stowage), or open out at right angles, forming a cross of four equal arms.

In each end of each bar was a hole capable of taking a good stout rope swifter, which was set up taut when the bars were opened, so as to keep them spread at right angles. Four other holes were punched, two in each bar, about midway between each end and the centre rivet; these were for the reception of a crowfoot.