"He recognised me, poor creature, and appeared to try to speak, but only made an inarticulate noise between a sob and a groan that rings in my ears now, while the blood gushed from his mouth as he fell forwards, facing me, dead, huddled up in a heap again upon the deck!
"Those devils incarnate, besides mutilating his limbs, had, would you believe it, cut out his tongue as they had before threatened, for warning us of their treachery!"
"G.o.d in heaven!" exclaimed Captain Applegarth, stopping in his quick walk up and down the saloon and bringing his fist down on the table with a bang that made the gla.s.ses in the swinging tray above jump and rattle, two of them indeed falling over and smashing into fragments on the floor. "The infernal demons! Can such things be? It is dreadful!"
All of us were equally horror stricken and indignant at the colonel"s terrible recital, even old Mr Stokes waking up and stretching out his hand to the skipper, as if pledging himself to what he wished to urge before he spoke.
"Horrible, horrible, sir!" he panted out, his anger taking away his breath and affecting his voice. "But we"ll avenge the poor fellow and kill the rascals when we come up with them, won"t we, sir? There"s my hand on it, anyway!"
I did not and could not say anything; no, I couldn"t; but you can pretty well imagine the oath I mentally registered.
Not so Garry O"Neil, though.
The Irishman"s face flamed with rage and anger. "Kill them, sor!" cried he, springing to his feet from the chair in which he had been seated alongside the colonel, whose injured limb he had been carefully attending to again all the while, his reddish beard and moustache bristling, and his steel-blue eyes flashing out veritable sparks, it seemed of fire. "Faith, killin"s too good for "em, sure, the haythen miscreants! I"d boil "em alive, sor, or roast "em in the stoke-hold, begorrah, if I had me own way with "em. I would, sor, so hilp me Moses, if all the howly saints, whose names be praised, an" the blessed ould Pope, too, prayed me to spare "em. Och, the murtherin" bastes, the daymans, the divvles!"
He was almost beside himself in his rage and pa.s.sionate invective. So much so, indeed, that Mr Stokes, despite his own hearty sympathy with the like cause, looked at the infuriated Irishman in great trepidation, for his face was flushed, and his hair seemed actually to stand on end, while his words tumbled out of his mouth pell-mell, jostling each other in their eagerness to find utterance.
The chief really fancied, I believe, that he had suddenly gone mad, as he literally fumed with fury.
After a few moments, however, Garry cooled down a bit, restraining himself by a violent effort, and he turned to his whilom patient with an apologetic air.
"Faith, sor, I fancied I had that divvle, your fri"nd, the markiss, sure, be the throat," said he, with a feeble attempt at a grin and biting his lips to keep in his feelings while he dropped his arms, which he had been whirling round his head like a maniac only just before. "By the powers, wouldn"t I throttle the baste swately, if I had hould of him once in these two hands of mine!"
Colonel Vereker stretched out both his impulsively, and gripped those of Garry O"Neil.
"Heavens!" he cried, with tears in his eyes. "You are a white man, sir.
I can"t say more than that, and I am proud to know you!"
"Och, niver moind that, colonel," said the Irishman, putting aside the compliment, the highest the colonel thought he could give. "Till us what you did, sure, afther the poor maimed crayture was murthered by that Haytian divvle. Faith, I loathe the baste. I hate him like pizen, though I haven"t sane him yit, more"s the pity; but it"ll be a bad job for him when I do clap my peepers on him!"
"I could not do much," said the other, proceeding with his account of the struggle with the mutineers on board the _Saint Pierre_, "but Captain Alphonse and myself emptied our revolvers at the scoundrels and floored three of them before they retreated back into the forecastle; but the "marquis," the greatest scoundrel of the whole lot, escaped scot free, though I fired four shots at him point blank as he dodged behind the mainmast and windla.s.s bits, keeping well under cover, and mocking my efforts to get a straight aim. The villain, I think, bears a charmed life!"
"Niver you fear, sor," put in Garry, in answer to this remark. "His father, ould Nick, is keepin" him for somethin" warm whin I git hould of him. Faith, sor, you can bet your boots on that, sure!"
Colonel Vereker smiled sadly at the impulsive Irishman"s remark. He could see that he had moved every fibre of his feeling heart and warm nature and that he was following every incident of his terrible story of atrocities and sufferings with an all-engrossing interest.
"I rushed to the p.o.o.p-ladder to make for the mocking brute, intending to grip him by the neck, as you have suggested, sir," said he, "when, by heavens, I would have choked the life out of his vile carca.s.s!
"But Captain Alphonse prevented me.
""My G.o.d! dear friend," he cried, catching hold of me round the body in his powerful arms, so that I could not move a step. "Remember the little one, your little daughter, who would have no one to protect her should these rabble kill you. Besides, my friend, the good Cato is dead now, and the useless sacrifice of your life, of both our lives probably, if you go forwards, and perhaps too the life of the little one, who cannot even help herself, will never bring back the breath to the brave lad"s body! No, no, colonel, I promise you," said he, at the same time kissing the tips of his fingers and elevating his shoulders, in his French fashion, "We will do something better than that. Only wait; be patient. We will avenge him, you will see, but I pray you do nothing rash, for the sake of the little one.""
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 Sat.u.r.day--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 Ba.s.seterre 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 advent.i.tious aid, we could now attack the cursed wretches in their stronghold, instead of our merely remaining on the defensive, waiting for them to a.s.sail 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 fete 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 Ba.s.seterre 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 p.o.o.p-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!"