This was followed by a deluge of rain, which washed our decks cleaner than they had been since we left our home port, though the first lieutenant was pretty sharp about seeing them scrubbed and washed down daily.
The same afternoon, when it had cleared up again, the sun coming out and the waves calming down, our lookout-man aloft in the foretop sighted something in the distance.
"Sail ho!" he cried, "on our lee bow."
Every eye was c.o.c.ked as we peered over the bulwarks, and every ear strained to catch what followed.
"Where away?" hailed the commodore, who was walking up and down aft, taking a const.i.tutional after his lunch, I suppose. "What do you make it out to be?"
"A boat adrift, sir, I think," replied the lookout-man, stopping to have another good look at the object. "It"s well away on our lee bow, sir, and we"re pa.s.sing it abeam now."
"Very good, my man," said the commodore; and, turning to the officer of the watch, he added, "Square the yards, Mr Osborne, and we"ll run down and see what it is."
This order was soon carried out; when, with our sticks braced round to the brisk breeze, which had shifted to the westward since the thunder- storm, we were soon bowling down before it, our sails bellied out to their utmost in the direction indicated by the lookout-man in the foretop, who was now aided by the eyes of half a dozen midshipmen or more, all eagerly scanning the horizon ahead with all sorts of telescopes and binoculars.
"Lookout-man!" hailed the commodore after a bit, "how does the boat bear now?"
"Dead on the weather bow, sir," returned the man the next instant.
"We"re about a couple o" mile off her, sir."
The commodore then addressed the quarter-master aft.
"Luff up!" he cried--"half a point will do; and, Mr Osborne, take a pull at your lee braces. That will do--steady!"
The ship having good way upon her, we soon overhauled the drifting boat, which we could make out presently quite clearly from the deck.
Nearer and nearer we approached it, until we could look down right into it and see a number of figures, all of whom, however, were motionless.
"Begorrah!" cried Mick, who stood near me in the fore-chains, ready with a rope to chuck down into the little craft as we surged alongside it, as indeed were several others also, like prepared, forwards; "they"ve bin havin" a divvle ov a row, or foightin", or somethin", sure; fur Tom, look thare, me bhoy--can"t ye say some soords or a pair of cutlashes or somethin" like "em oonder the afther-thwart theer?"
CHAPTER TWENTY.
"JOCKO."
"I believe I do, Mick," I said, squinting down as eagerly as himself into the boat, near to which the ship was gradually sidling up, her way having been checked by her being brought up to the wind and the maintop- sail backed. "They are very quiet, poor chaps. I wonder if they are all dead?"
The same thought seemed to have occurred to the old commodore; for, as I said this, in pursuance of some order he must have given to that effect--for n.o.body does a thing on board a man-o"-war without the previous command of his superior officer--the boatswain hailed the little craft.
"Boat ahoy!" he shouted, with his lungs of bra.s.s and voice of a bull.
"Ahoy! Ahoy-oy!"
No answer came, nor was there any movement amongst the boat"s occupants, who were lying pell-mell along the thwarts and on the bottom boards in her sternsheets.
"Poor fellows, they must be all dead!" exclaimed the commodore, almost in my own words. "Mr Osborne, get a boat ready to send off and overhaul her!"
The officer of the watch, however, had already made preparations to this end, the first cutter"s crew having been piped and the men standing ready by the davits to lower her into the water, with the gripes cast off and the falls cleared.
"All ready there, c.o.xsun, eh?" he cried; and then, without waiting for any answer, he sang out, "Lower away!"
Down glided the cutter into the water as the hands inboard eased off the falls; and, her crew having dropped their oars, the next minute she was pulling out towards the boat, which was now only some twenty yards or so off the ship, abreast of our mizzen-chains.
Of course, we could see from the ship all that went on as the cutter sheered up to the derelict craft. The bowman was standing up with his boathook ready to hook on when he got near enough, and Mr Osborne, the "first luff," standing up likewise astern to inspect the better the boat and its motionless occupants, he himself having gone away in the cutter, seeing how anxious the commodore seemed in the matter, instead of sending a young midshipman as usual.
Something strange must have happened, for, as our boat touched the other, we could hear a startled cry from Mr Osborne, followed by a sort of suppressed groan from the cutter"s crew.
This reached the commodore"s ear. "Cutter, ahoy!" he hailed. "Any one alive?"
"No, sir," came back the reply from Mr Osborne, in a sad tone. "All are dead--and a fearful death too!"
"Why," called out the commodore eagerly, as curious as all of us were, "what"s the matter?"
"Struck by lightning, I think, sir," answered Mr Osborne, who held his handkerchief to his face and spoke in a stifled voice, after bending down and looking over into the sternsheets of the derelict. "Can"t say exactly, sir. They"re in an awful state!"
"Ho, bad job!" muttered the commodore aft, on the p.o.o.p, as if talking to himself; and then in a louder key he sang out, "You"d better bring the boat alongside and let the doctor see them!"
Thereupon the bowman hitching the cutter"s painter to the stem of the other boat which projected above the gunwale, and letting out the slack of the rope so as the boat should not come too close, Mr Osborne giving some order to that effect, they took her in tow, and in a few strokes were alongside the ship again.
When they came up, there was no reason for any one to ask why the first lieutenant had held his handkerchief to his face.
The stench was abominable!
The doctor, who was ready and waiting at the ship"s side, at once went down by the commodore"s orders and examined the dead men, who we now saw were five in number, though they smelt like five hundred.
"Bedad, Tom," said Mick to me, as we looked down over the side, holding our noses--as, indeed, everybody on board was doing, every man-jack in the ship, I think, being on deck, from the old commodore down to the youngest middy and ship"s boy--"Oi nivver smilt a shmell loike thet since me faither an" Oi wor at Clontarf whin they opened the graveyard theer, and toorned the owld coffins out wid the bones rattlin" aboot in thim jist loike pays in a pannikin, sure, whin we"re goin" fur to make pay-soup, or pay doo, ez we used fur to call it aboard the owld _Saint Vincent_!"
Mr Osborne meanwhile had come up the side; and from where Mick and I were standing, by the mizzen-chains, I could hear distinctly every word he said, though I missed the first part, from Mick Donovan speaking to me at the moment, and he was in the middle of a sentence when I began to take in his words.
"--Must have been a terrible scrimmage, sir. One of the cutla.s.ses seems covered with dry blood right up to the hilt; while the two dead chaps between the thwarts are cut about and carved in all directions. The lot of them, no doubt, were at it hammer and tongs when the flash came."
"Begorrah," whispered Mick in my ear, in comment on this statement, "it wor jist loike the two Kilkenny cats, sure, who fought till thaire wor ownly theer tails lift, sure!"
The commodore, however, took a graver view of the matter.
"It must have been awfully sudden, Mr Osborne," he said; "and you think they were runaways or mutineers?"
"I"m sure of it," replied "Number One" significantly. "There are a lot of gold coins and dollars scattered about in the bottom of the boat, besides an open bundle containing a collection of watches and other jewellery; and, from the greasy pack of cards lying alongside these, I fancy they must have been playing for the plunder and quarrelled about the division of it!"
"Then the lightning came and settled the thing for good and all," said the commodore solemnly, sinking his voice to an impressive tone. "It was the judgment of G.o.d!"
The doctor, after a very brief stay in the boat, came up the side again and made his report to our chief.
"All of them must have been killed instanter by the one flash of lightning, which seems to have gone all over the boat, zigzagging in a most curious manner," said he. "The electric fluid, sir, has actually fused the blade of one of the cutla.s.ses, and melted down the dollars and doubloons, which the poor devils must have been gambling with, all into a solid ma.s.s in the bottom of the boat!"
"Indeed!"
"Yes, sir," affirmed the doctor, in answer to this exclamation from the commodore. "But the lightning, sir, has done something more wonderful than that, which I would not have believed unless I had seen it myself.
I pulled open the shirt of one of the dead men, and there, on his breast, was a perfect photograph, as if done in Indian ink, of a ship in full sail, like the one which nearly collided with us the other day and afterwards foundered!"