The Rover's Secret Part 4

Unable to endure the terrible spectacle, I turned my eyes in Mr Reid's direction, only to see that the unfortunate man whom he supported was in quite as bad a plight. It was evident not only that the poor fellow was dead, but also that death must have been instantaneous, the neck being broken, and the crown of the skull apparently crushed in such a way that the brain could be seen protruding, and the deck also was bespattered.

"Pa.s.s the word for the surgeon, there, somebody, and tell him to look smart!" gasped poor old David in a voice so hoa.r.s.e and changed with horror and grief that I should never have recognised it as his had I not seen his lips move.

In a minute or two the surgeon made his appearance on the scene, and a very brief examination sufficed to enable him to p.r.o.nounce both the men dead.

The first lieutenant undertook to announce the sad intelligence to the skipper, who still remained standing in the same position, apparently as unconcerned as if nothing had happened. I must confess that I, for one, fully expected to see some very decided manifestation of emotion on the captain's part when he learned the tragical nature of the disaster; but, instead of that, on being told the news, he--to the horror and indignation of everybody who heard him--simply said:

"Um! dead, are they? Then throw the lubbers overboard!" And this was actually done. Without the slightest pretence to ceremony or reverence of any kind, without so much as a single prayer to consecrate their dismissal to their final resting-place in the bosom of the deep, without even pausing to sew up the poor fellows in their hammocks, with a shot at their feet to ensure their safe arrival in the quiet and peaceful region of the ocean's bed, the bodies were straightway raised from the deck and, with a "One, two, three, _heave_!" were flung over the side, to be instantly fought over and torn to pieces by some half a dozen sharks which had put in an unsuspected appearance on the scene. Many a curse, "not loud but deep," was called down upon the skipper's head that night by the shipmates of the murdered men--for murdered they undoubtedly were--and many a vow of complete and speedy vengeance was solemnly registered. Insulted, scoffed at, derided, their last spark of self-respect--if indeed any such thing still remained to them--outraged and trodden under foot, the crew were that night changed from men to devils; and if, at the conclusion of those unceremonious obsequies, a leader had but stepped forward and placed himself at their head, they would have risen upon us and, all unarmed as they were, torn us to pieces.

No such thought or fear, however, appeared to present itself to Captain Pigot, for, instead of evincing or expressing any sorrow for what had occurred, he imperiously ordered the hands to be mustered in the waist, with the evident intention of "reading them a lecture," as he was wont to term his too frequent hectoring addresses.

The men, sullen, and with suppressed fury blazing in their eyes and revealing itself in their every gesture, swarmed aft and stood in reckless expectation of some further outrage. Nor were they disappointed.

"I have sent for you," the skipper began, in his most sneering and contemptuous accents, "not to express any hypocritical sorrow for the occurrence which has just taken place, but to point out to you the obvious lesson which is to be learned from it--a lesson which I fear your dense ignorance, your utter dest.i.tution of discernment and common- sense, would prevent your ever discovering for yourselves. Within the last half-hour two men have come to their deaths. How? Why, by a sneaking, cowardly attempt to evade the punishment justly due to the lazy, skulking, lubberly way in which they performed their duty. It would have been better for them had they listened to the first lieutenant's admonition and come quietly down from aloft, to receive at a proper time the punishment which they richly deserved. But they must needs attempt to shirk it, with the consequences which you have all witnessed; and, so far as I am concerned, I can only say that I think they have met with no more than their just deserts.

"But it is not of them I want to speak to you; it is of yourselves. The same shirking, idle, rebellious spirit which distinguished them is conspicuous in every one of you. It is little more than a couple of hours ago that your officers waited upon me in a body to make formal complaint of your idleness and insubordinate conduct. There was no necessity for them to do any such thing, for I am not altogether lacking in powers of observation, and I have not failed to notice that for some time past there has been a general disposition on the part of all hands to thwart and oppose me in every possible way; but I just mention the fact of this complaint to show you that I am not alone in my opinion as to your conduct. Now, my lads, you are a great many, and I am only one man; but if you suppose that on that account you will be able to get your own way, or successfully oppose me, you will discover that you never made a greater mistake in your lives. You may shirk your work, or perform it in a slovenly, unseamanlike manner as long as you please, but I warn you, one and all, that I have made up my mind to convert you from the lazy, skulking, mutinous set of tinkers and tailors you now are, into the smartest and best-disciplined crew in the service; and by Heaven I will do it too, even though it should be necessary to administer a daily flogging to every man in the ship. There are some few of you who are a shade worse--a shade more idle, and lubberly, and insubordinate--than the rest; you, Jones, are one; you, Hoskings, are another, and you, Thomson, Kirkpatrick, Davis, Morrison, I have my eye upon all of you; you are booked, every man of you, for an early taste of the cat; and I a.s.sure you that when it comes it will be a sharp one.

You shall learn that, in laying yourselves out to oppose your captain, you have undertaken a task altogether beyond your strength. You shall have neither rest nor peace day or night, henceforward, until I have completely quelled your present rebellious spirit and brought you to a proper condition of subordination and smartness. So now, my lads, you know what you have to expect, and, whatever happens, you will never be able to say that I did not give you due warning. Pipe down!"

The men turned away and dispersed in perfect silence. Usually after the administration of a lecture, however severe, some irrepressible joker might be detected with his head c.o.c.ked on one side and his face with a waggish grin upon it, turned toward his next neighbour, evidently giving utterance to some jocular comment upon the lately-delivered address, as he gave his breeches the true nautical hitch forward and abaft; but on this occasion there was nothing of the kind, the indignation and disgust aroused by the skipper's arrogant and threatening speech appeared to be altogether too overpowering to allow of the escape of a humorous idea to the surface.

The silence of the men was so complete as to be, to my mind, ominous, whilst their bearing was marked by that peculiar air of defiant recklessness which is to be observed in individuals who feel that Fortune has at length done her very worst for them. How much longer, I wondered, would they thus tamely suffer themselves to be hectored and browbeaten? how much longer go quietly to the gangway and submit to be severely flogged for the most trifling offences? Then, too, I felt indignant at the unscrupulous way in which the skipper had misrepresented the nature of the officers' recent interview with him, and had conveyed the impression that they were rather favouring than deprecating the severity of his discipline. Such conduct struck me as being not only barbarously tyrannical, but also in the highest degree impolitic; for what could any man of sense expect but that, by persistence in it, he would make good men bad, and bad men worse. And if the men were to turn restive in the presence of an enemy--which was, to my mind, not unlikely, though I never antic.i.p.ated anything worse-- what would be the result? The whole aspect of affairs looked unsatisfactory in the extreme, and when I turned into my hammock that night it was to indulge in sundry very gloomy forebodings before I finally dropped off to sleep; though Heaven knows how far I was from guessing at the scenes of horror of which the frigate was to be the theatre before another twenty-four hours had pa.s.sed over my head.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE MUTINY.

During the night a little air of wind sprang up from the eastward which carried us out clear of the Mona Pa.s.sage, and when day dawned we found ourselves with a clear horizon all round the ship. At noon we wore round to retrace our steps, and by sunset we were within a dozen miles of the spot we had occupied at the same hour on the previous evening.

The day, for a wonder, had pa.s.sed almost pleasantly; there had been no flogging; Captain Pigot had scarcely showed himself on deck, except for a few minutes after breakfast and again at noon; and the officers of the watches, glad to be freed from his obnoxious presence, had been careful not to unnecessarily hurry and badger the men whilst carrying on the duty of the ship. The only circ.u.mstance which, to my mind, seemed disquieting, was the unusual demeanour of the men, who performed their work, steadily enough indeed, but in a moody, unnatural silence, wearing, meantime, a gloomy, preoccupied air, whilst they at the same time--at least so it appeared to me--seemed to be, one and all, in a restless, anxious, watchful frame of mind, as though they were in momentary expectation of something happening. I could not at all understand this state of things, which was something quite new, for, notwithstanding the skipper's intolerable tyranny, there were a few of the men--and those among the best and smartest hands we had in the ship--who had hitherto contrived to maintain a fairly cheerful demeanour, and who seldom let slip such an opportunity as that afforded by the captain's absence from the deck to indulge in the exchange of a quiet bit of nautical humour or a harmless practical joke with their next neighbour. To-day, however, this sort of thing was conspicuously absent; and I was at first disposed to attribute the unwonted gloom to the men's horror and regret at the lamentable accident of the previous evening. But that, I felt again, would scarcely account for it; for, however sincere may be Jack's attachment to his shipmates whilst they are alive and with him, they are no sooner dead and buried than, from his quickly acquired habit of promptly casting behind him all disquieting memories, he forgets all about them and their fate.

At length, as the day wore on and drew to a peaceful close, my misgivings, such as they were--and they were, after all, so slight as scarcely to deserve mention--pa.s.sed away; and at eight bells I retired to my hammock with a dawning hope that perhaps, after all, the collective remonstrance of the officers was about to bear good fruit.

My mind being thus at rest, I at once sank into a profound sleep, from which I was abruptly startled by a loud noise of some kind, though what it was I could not for the moment make out. Almost immediately afterwards, however, I heard it again--a loud furious combined shout of many voices from the fore part of the ship. Feeling instinctively that something was wrong, I leaped from my hammock--as also did Courtenay, my only companion in the berth--and began hurriedly to search for my clothes by the dim light of the smoky lamp which hung swaying from the deck-beam overhead. Before, however, I had time to do more than don my socks, a grizzled weatherbeaten main-topman named Ned Sykes made his appearance in the doorway of the berth, with a drawn cutla.s.s in his hand and a pair of pistols in his belt. He looked intently at us both for a moment, and then said, in a gruff but kindly tone of voice:

"Muster Lascelles, and Muster Courtenay, ain't it? Ha! that's all right; I reckoned I should find you two young gen'lemen here, safe enough. Now, you two, just slip into your hammicks again as fast as you knows how, and stay there until I gives you leave to get out of 'em."

"Why, what is the matter, Ned? What is all the row about?" asked Courtenay, with wide-staring, horrified eyes. For, by this time, the shouting and yelling were tremendous, and accompanied by a loud thumping, rumbling sound, produced, as we afterwards ascertained, by the shot which the men were flinging about the decks.

"The matter is just this here, young 'un," replied Ned, entering the berth and seating himself on a chest, "The hands for'ard has made up their minds not to have no more such haccidents as them two that occurred last night; nor they ain't a-goin' to have no more floggin' nor bully-raggin', so they've just rose up and are takin' possession of the ship--Aha! I'm terrible afeard that means bloodshed," as a piercing shriek echoed through the ship. "Now," he continued, seeing that we evinced a strong disinclination to return to our hammocks, "you just tumble into them hammicks and lie down, _quick_; you couldn't do a morsel of good, e'er a one of yer, if you was out there on deck--you'd only get hurted or, mayhap, killed outright,--and I've been specially told off to come here and see as neither of yer gets into trouble; you've both been good kindly lads, you especial, Muster Lascelles-- you've never had your eyes open to notice any little shortcomin's or skylarkin's on the part of the men, nor your tongues double-hung for to go and report 'em, so the lads is honestly anxious as you sha'n't come to no harm in this here rumpus."

"Then the men have actually mutinied," said I--and there I stopped short, for at that moment came the sound of a rush aft of many feet, with shouts and curses, mingled with which I heard the loud harsh tones of Captain Pigot's voice raised in anger. The _melee_, however, if such there was, quickly swept aft, and there was a lull for perhaps two or three minutes, followed by the sounds of a brief struggle on the quarter-deck, a few shrieks and groans, telling all too plainly of the b.l.o.o.d.y work going forward, and then silence, broken only now and then by the sound of Farmer's voice, apparently issuing orders, though what he was actually saying we could not distinguish.

During all this time Courtenay and I lay huddled up in our hammocks, too terrified and horror-stricken to say a word. At length, after the lapse of about an hour of quietness on deck, Sykes--after cautioning us most earnestly not, on any account, to move from where we were until his return--set out with the expressed intention of ascertaining how the land lay. He was absent about a quarter of an hour; and on his return he informed us in horrified accents that, out of all the officers of the ship, there remained alive only Mr Southcott the master, the gunner, the carpenter, Courtenay, myself--and Farmer, the master's mate, who, it appeared, had taken a leading part in the mutiny, and had been elected to the command of the ship. It was evident, from the scared and horrified appearance and manner of our informant, that he had never antic.i.p.ated any of this awful violence and bloodshed, though he frankly admitted that he had been a consenting party to the mutiny--the general understanding being that the officers were all to be secured in the first instance, and afterwards handed over as prisoners to the enemy-- and he hurriedly explained to us that, for his own safety's sake, it would now be necessary for him to leave us and join the rest of the mutineers without delay, but that he would return to us as soon as he possibly could; and that, in the meantime, we were on no account to leave the berth, or our lives would certainly be sacrificed.

After hearing such statements as these, no further warning was needed to keep us two unhappy mids close prisoners for the rest of the night.

Further sleep was of course quite out of the question; so we hastily dressed, and, closing the door of the berth, seated ourselves on a sea- chest, where we pa.s.sed the remainder of the night discussing the awful tragedy which had so suddenly been enacted, comparing notes as to our mutual forebodings of some such disaster, and, lastly, wondering what would be the ultimate fate of ourselves and the few other surviving officers.

At length, after what appeared to be a very eternity of suspense and anxiety, steps were heard approaching the berth; and, upon our throwing open the door, Sykes, somewhat the worse for liquor, made his appearance, hailing us, in tones of obviously forced joviality, with:

"Well, what cheer, my fighting c.o.c.ks--my bully bantams? How goes it?

Hope your honours has pa.s.sed a comfortable night," with a ghastly grin at his own facetiousness. Then, with considerably more seriousness of manner, he continued:

"Well, young uns, Farmer--or _Mister_ Farmer, I should say--has been axing arter you, and his instructions am that you may now go 'pon deck.

But--hark 'e, my bullies, keep your weather eyes a-liftin' and a stopper upon your tongues. Whatsomever you may happen to see don't you be led away into indulgin' in any onpleasant remarks upon it; nor don't you go for to try and talk over any of the lads into 'returning to their duty,'

or any rot of that sort; for so sure as either of you attempts anything like that, so surely will you get your brains blowed out. The ship's took--what's done is done--and neither you nor n.o.body else can make or mend the job; the men is in a mighty ticklish humour, I can tell 'e, and if you wants to save your precious carca.s.ses you'll have to walk mighty carc.u.mspect. And that's the advice and opinion of a friend, all free, gratis, and for nothink. Now, come along, my hearties; show a leg!"

We followed our well-meaning guide up the ladder to the quarter-deck, where we found Farmer apparently awaiting our appearance. He was standing or rather leaning in a wearied att.i.tude against a gun on the starboard side of the deck; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes gleamed feverishly; he looked a good twenty years older than he had appeared to be on the previous day; and, like a good many of the other mutineers, he appeared to have been indulging somewhat freely in liquor. He roused himself at our approach, and, seating himself in a negligent, careless att.i.tude on the breech of the gun, said:

"Good morning, young gentlemen. I am glad to see you both safe and sound. Sykes has of course informed you of what has taken place--he had my instructions to do so, as also to see that you were kept out of harm's way last night. Now, what I have to say to you is this. You two lads having invariably manifested kindness and sympathy for the men, they were especially anxious that whenever the rising might take place your lives should be spared. This has been done. You are alive and unharmed this morning, whilst others have gone to render an account of their manifold misdeeds--their countless acts of oppression and cruelty--before that Judge in whose sight their lives are not one whit more valuable than the lives of those whom they have goaded and driven to death--ay, and to _worse_ than death--to such frantic desperation as can only be allayed by the shedding of blood like water. Now, mark me well, both of you; you have had neither part nor lot in this matter-- those who wished you well have so managed that, whether or no, you should be kept strictly neutral throughout the affair; all those to whom you owed obedience are either dead or prisoners; you are not asked or expected to join us--we do not want you and should not care to have you even if you were willing--you are therefore relieved from duty; and all that is asked of you is that you shall interfere in no way, either by word or deed, with the working of the ship or with our plans. If you are agreeable to abide by this proposal, well and good; you will be welcome to come and go as you like until we find it convenient to land you; you will be allowed to occupy your former quarters, and your rations will be regularly served out to you. But if on the other hand you make the slightest attempt to communicate with the prisoners, or endeavour in any way to seduce any of the men from their loyalty to the rest, I will hang you both that same hour, one from each yard-arm. That is understood and agreed to, is it not, men?" he continued, raising his voice and appealing to the crowd of mutineers who had gathered round us.

"Ay, ay, that's agreed; that's fair enough," was the unanimous reply.

With that, Farmer waved his hand to us by way of dismissal; and considerably thrown off our balance by the address to which we had just listened, and by the terrible turn affairs had taken generally, we slunk off to the p.o.o.p, so as to be as far away as possible from the murderous gang and from the ghastly puddles of coagulated blood about the quarter- deck, which still bore witness to heaven against them.

At this moment a man on the forecastle electrified all hands by shouting:

"Sail ho!"

I saw Farmer start from his seat on the gun as if shot, his flushed features turned ashen pale, and for a moment his palsied lips refused to give utterance to a sound.

"Sail ho!" repeated the man in a louder hail, thinking, I suppose, that his first intimation had pa.s.sed unnoticed. This second hail fairly startled the men, and in a moment everything was bustle and confusion and panic. It aroused Farmer too; he pulled himself together sufficiently to respond to the hail with the usual question, "Where away?" and, on receiving the reply, "Two points on the larboard bow,"

walked forward to personally inspect the stranger. We, of course, likewise directed our glances in the specified direction; and there she was, sure enough, a large ship, on the starboard tack, with every st.i.tch of canvas set that would draw, and steering a course which would take her across our bows at a distance of about a mile.

"Bring me the spy-gla.s.s out of the cabin, somebody!" hailed Farmer from the forecastle. The gla.s.s--a very powerful one and a favourite instrument with the murdered captain--was handed him by one of the quarter-masters, and he applied it to his eye. A breathless silence now prevailed fore and aft for the stranger had all the look of a British man-of-war, and everybody was waiting to hear what Farmer's verdict would be. The inspection was a long-sustained and evidently anxious one. At length, dropping the gla.s.s into the hollow of his arm Farmer turned and said:

"Bring Mr Southcott on deck, and let us hear his opinion of yonder hooker."

In a few minutes the master was escorted on deck by a couple of armed seamen, and led forward to where Farmer was standing.

"Mr Southcott," said the mutineer, turning toward the individual addressed, and perceptibly shrinking as their glance met, "be good enough to take this gla.s.s, and let me know wha' you think of the stranger yonder."

"Stranger!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Southcott. "Where away? Ah, I see her!" and he took the gla.s.s from Farmer's extended hand.

"Well, what think you of her?" asked Farmer impatiently, after the master had been silently working away with the gla.s.s for some two or three minutes.

"One moment, please," answered Southcott with his eye still glued to the tube; "I think--but I am not quite sure--if she would only keep just the merest trifle more away--so as to permit of my catching a glimpse--"

"Sail ho!" shouted a man in the fore-top; "two of 'em, a brig and a ship on the starboard beam, away in under the land there!"

Farmer unceremoniously s.n.a.t.c.hed the gla.s.s away from the master and levelled it in the direction indicated.

"Ay, ay, I see them," said he. "That is the _Drake_ nearest us, and the _Favourite_ insh.o.r.e of her. They are all right; we have nothing to fear from them. It is this stranger here ahead of us that bothers me. Come, Mr Southcott," he continued, "you ought to know something about her by this time--you have been looking at her long enough; do you think you ever saw her before?"

The master took the gla.s.s, had another long squint at the ship ahead, then handed the instrument back to Farmer, with the answer:

"I decline to say whether I have or not."