Kilgorman Part 47

"Keep her as she is," said Mr Adrian; "and, Mr Gallagher, pipe all hands. The sooner we come to an understanding with these fiends the better."

I obeyed. A few of the old tars instinctively turned up to the call, but seeing all decks but the quarter-deck deserted, they remembered themselves and went off to look for their comrades.

Presently an uneasy group a.s.sembled on the forecastle, many of them showing traces of the mingled drunkenness and sea-sickness of the night.

We could see them scanning the horizon with their gla.s.ses, and slowly awaking to the discovery that instead of being in the arms of the confederacy of "the Republic afloat" (as one of the proclamations had called it), the _Zebra_ was scudding over the high seas.

There was an angry consultation, and shouts to those below to turn up.

About half the number obeyed, though many of these were fit only to lie helplessly about the deck. A more miserable crew you never beheld.

"Hands aloft! Take in the main-topgallant sail!" cried Mr Adrian, and the order was shouted forward.

Not a man moved, except Callan, who came to the forecastle rail, and holding up a pistol, shouted back,--

"Surrender the ship, or we fire!"

Mr Adrian's reply was to repeat the order just given, and draw his pistol.

One of the mutineers, sent forward by the leaders, advanced to the mainmast with a red flag in his hand, which he proceeded to fasten to the flag-lines and to hoist, bringing down the Union flag as he did so.

Mr Adrian levelled his pistol. There was a sharp, clear ring above the noise of the gale; the man flung up his arms, uttered a yell, and rolled over on the deck.

"Stand clear!" cried Callan, waving his men on either side of the forecastle guns. "Fire, my lads!"

There was a silence. No one on the quarter-deck stirred. Those on the forecastle who had stood with their faces our way, expecting to see the effect of the volley, looked round impatiently to see why the guns were mute.

Then came a cry of "Spiked!" followed by a howl of dismay as the contents of one of our quarter-deck guns crashed with a dull, savage roar on to the forecastle.

When the smoke cleared we saw a ghastly sight. Men lay in all directions--some blown to pieces, some groaning in pools of blood, some dragging themselves with livid faces to a place of shelter.

For my own part, I dreaded to hear Mr Adrian give the order to fire the second gun. The only thing which prevented it was the sudden clearing of the forecastle. All who could rushed to the main-deck, where at least they were below the range of the deadly grape.

Here Callan, who had escaped unhurt, called on his men to form, which they did in three straggling lines across the deck, howling execrations and flourishing their knives in our direction.

Before they could advance--before, indeed, those of them who carried pistols could fire--Mr Adrian, who had ranged us up behind the barricade, gave the signal to present arms and fire.

It was a volley almost as deadly as the first. Callan sprang a foot or two in the air, and fell back shot through the heart. The front rank of the mutineers went down like ninepins, and those behind fell back a pace in consternation, "Reload! Mark your men!" cried Mr Adrian, whose face was savage and as hard as a flint.

The wretches gathered themselves together after a moment's hesitation, and stepping over the fallen bodies of their comrades, advanced with a half-hearted rush for the quarter-deck.

"Present! fire!" cried Mr Adrian.

Once more man after man went down dead or wounded, and the deck was strewn with bodies. A heavy sea at the moment broke over the quarter, sweeping the deck and clashing living and dead in a heap into the lee- scuppers. A few stood still, eyeing dubiously first one another, then the quarter-deck, then the waves as they broke across the waist.

"Reload! Mark your men!" cried Mr Adrian again, with a curl of his lips.

The mutineers heard the command, and dropping their weapons, retreated in a panic to the hatchways.

"Fire!" said Mr Adrian; "and after them, some of you, and make fast the hatches."

The first order was not obeyed. It had been bad enough, in defence of the ship, to fire on one's own shipmates, but to fire on their backs was too much; and Lieutenant Adrian probably understood as much when he saw that we all preferred his second order to his first.

It was a short business making good the hatchways, after first driving below the few stragglers who lingered above board. Then we had leisure to take stock of the execution our volleys had effected. Eleven men, including Callan and two of his fellow ringleaders, were dead. Eight more were mortally wounded, and thirty-eight lay hurt, some badly, some slightly. We lost no time in throwing the dead overboard, and carrying those most in need of succour out of the reach of the waves. Tarpaulins were spread for the rest till a place could be found for them in some of the after-cabins.

The doctor (who reported that Captain Swift had breathed his last while the engagement was at its height) did what he could to dress the wounds of the sufferers, and impressed the services of one or two of the handiest of the men present as a.s.sistants.

Just then, however, with the gale threatening every moment to snap the masts, it was even more important to get hands aloft to shorten sail.

The midshipmen and officers gallantly undertook this difficult task, but not in time to save the main-topgallant mast, which fell with a crash, carrying away the purser and the boatswain's mate, and fouling the rigging below with its wreck. No sooner was this cleared, and the top courses taken in, than the man who had been for some moments conning the strange sails on the horizon reported,--

"Two Dutchmen, sir, thirty-six guns a-piece, bearing this way."

During the struggle with the mutineers we had almost forgotten the presence of these strangers, and now found them not a league away standing across the wind to meet us.

It was a hopeless venture to meet them, but Mr Adrian preferred it to putting the _Zebra_ about and running away.

"Let them come," said he; "they can't do worse than these scoundrels down below. Stand by the guns, gentlemen!"

We obeyed willingly enough. Had Mr Adrian only been a gentleman as well as an officer we could have cheered him. But the vision of his face as he gave the word to mow down his own crew stuck in my memory and robbed _me_ of all the enthusiasm which his present courage deserved.

On we sped, and nearer drew the Dutchmen. Evidently they were cruisers on the prowl for an enemy, or sent to observe the motions of our disorganised fleet. Had we been a sound company we might have held our own against the two of them. But crippled as we were, with our guns unmanned, our ammunition lost, and part of our crew lying wounded on deck, while the rest were prisoners below, we might as well have hoped to capture Rotterdam.

Fate, however, determined our destiny in her own way. Just as we were coming about, and those at the guns were blowing their matches for a first and possibly a last broadside, the _Zebra_ gave a sudden shiver in every timber, there was a dull growl, followed an instant later by a terrific explosion which rent the vessel in twain, and dimmed the sky overhead with spars and smoke, and set the ship reeling on her beam- ends. At the moment, I was in the act of firing the charge of the gun in my care, and remember nothing but the tremendous noise, and finding myself hurled, as it seemed, clear over the breech of the weapon out into the boiling sea.

Instinctively I clutched at a spar within reach, and clung to it. All else I saw and heard as in a dream--the ship heeling over further and further, and the waves leaping on her as she plunged down; the cries and shrieks of the imprisoned wretches who sought to escape from the consequences of their own desperate revenge; the sea strewn with wreckage and struggling swimmers; the first lieutenant's dying malediction flung into the wind from the quarter-deck; the looming hulls of the two Dutchmen as they hung in the wind and watched our fate. All, I say, pa.s.sed like a grim nightmare. What woke me was an arm suddenly flung across me, and the white face of Mr Midshipman Gamble looking up at me out of the water.

I hauled him up on to the spar; and the effort to keep him afloat, and save myself from his wild struggles, helped me to find my wits.

"Easy, lad!" said I; "you're safe enough here. Keep quiet!"

The sound of a voice steadied him, and he ceased his struggles, and let me lash him as best I could to the spar.

The Dutchmen, who had, no doubt, witnessed with anything but pleasure their prey s.n.a.t.c.hed out of their hands, were humane enough to make a show of lowering a boat for the succour of those who still lived. But the heavy sea rendered this a very difficult and dangerous task, and after very little trying we had the dismay of seeing them abandon the attempt and haul off on their course, leaving us to our fate.

You may fancy with what feelings we watched them gradually growing less on the horizon, and realised that we were at the mercy of an angry sea, with no support but a piece of broken timber, and every moment finding ourselves more and more alone, as comrade after comrade gave up the struggle and fell back among the waves.

Presently Mr Gamble, whose leg, I found, had been crushed by the explosion, groaned, and his head fell forward. Three great waves in succession washed over us with the force of a falling wall; and when they had pa.s.sed, and I looked to my companion, he was dead, with the life simply beaten out of him.

Sorrowfully enough I unlashed him, and let him drop beneath the pitiless water; and then, finding my own strength beginning to fail, I lashed myself under the arms and over the spar, and hung on for dear life. In this posture I spent weary hour after hour watching the waves, and endeavouring to ward off from my head the fury of their onslaught.

About mid-day the gale eased somewhat. I looked about me. Not a sign or vestige remained of the _Zebra_ or her hapless crew. Not a floating thing among the waves caused me to count on the company of a living wretch like myself. Not even a livid corpse across my track served to remind me that I, of all that ship's company, still clung to life.

Strange visions, as I rose and fell with the heaving sea, floated before my eyes. The gloomy kitchen at Kilgorman, and my mother's letter gleaming under the hearthstone--the hollow on the cliff's edge where Tim and I had once fought--Biddy McQuilkin sitting at the fireside in our cabin, setting her cap at my father--Miss Kit with the gun at her shoulder behind the hall-door at Knockowen--the unhappy old man being dragged to the guillotine in Paris--the lumbering barge floating down the Seine--Tim in the light of the lantern at the helm of the _Kestrel_;--these and many other visions chased one another across my memory, first in regular procession, then tripping one over the other, then all jumbled and mixed together in such chaos that it was Kit who was being haled to the guillotine, and Tim who lay below the hearthstone, and Biddy who navigated the barge.

Presently one vision seemed to hang in my memory longer than the others, and that was the light of the morning sun as it struck on the retreating sails of the brig _Scheldt_ of Rotterdam, standing out to sea off Malin.

One by one all my other fancies merged into this--the guillotine changed into a brig, the _Kestrel_ changed into the _Scheldt_, the Kilgorman kitchen became a deck, and Miss Kit a Dutch skipper. Why was it? Why should everything come back to that one brig in the offing?

Suddenly I understood it. There, as I looked up from my restless raft and followed the gleam of the afternoon sun as it broke through the clouds, I perceived just such another vision in the offing--a brig, with canvas set, and the light glancing on her sails as she laboured over the waves towards me!

She may have been a mile away. By the look of her she was a foreign craft, and may have been a trader coasting between the Dutch ports.

Whatever she was, the sight of her put new life into me.