Chapter Twenty Four.
A Free Fight.
But hardly had the colonel given vent to his despairing exclamation, expressive alike of his own dismay and ours also, when the bitter feeling of disappointment at being too late, that had for the moment weighed down upon us, crushing our enthusiasm, was suddenly banished and the hearts of all filled with renewed hope and fierce determination.
We were not too late after all!
No.
For as we gazed in blank surprise at the howling mob of Haytians, who appeared to have gained complete possession of the Saint Pierre, and were dancing about and gesticulating in their wild, devilish fashion, calling out to us with wild derisive cries, as if mocking at our efforts to save those whom they had already butchered, a bright flame of fire flashed out from the skylight hatch of the doomed ship, followed by the sharp crack of a revolver; and at the same instant one of the half-naked devils massed on the poop leaped into the air and then fell on his face flat on the deck, uttering a yell of agony as he writhed his limbs in the throes of death.
An exulting cheer broke from all of us in the Star of the North on seeing this, every man gripping his weapon tightly, and setting his teeth hard, ready for action, as the two vessels sidled up nearer and nearer.
Then if word were wanted to spur us on, the skipper gave that word with a vengeance!
“By George! my lads, we’re in time yet to save the child and our other white comrades!” he cried out loudly, at the same time jumping into the mizzen rigging, where he hung on the shrouds with one hand, while in the other he held a cutlass which he had hastily clutched up, whirling it round his lionlike old grey head. “See, men, they’ve retreated to the cabin below, where they’re fighting for their lives to the last. Tumble up, my lads, and save them, like the British sailors that you are! Boarders, away!”
As he said this, Mr Fosset, who was still on the bridge conning the old barquey, having at once ported our helm, on the skipper holding up his cutlass, taking this for a signal, we came broadside-on, slap against the hull of the other ship with a jolt that shook her down to her very kelson, rolling a lot of the darkies, who were grouped aft, off their legs like so many ninepins. At the same moment, before the two craft had time to glide apart, both having way upon them, old Masters forward, and Parrell, the quartermaster, who was stationed in the waist of our vessel, just under the break of the poop, hooked on grapnels, with hawsers attached, to the weather rigging of the Saint Pierre; and ere the skipper’s rallying cry and our answering cheer had died away, drowned by the voice of our escaping steam rushing up the funnels on the engines coming to a stop, now that their duty for the nonce was done, there we were moored hard and fast together, alongside the whilom dreaded “ghost-ship!”
Then with another wild hurrah that made the ringbolts in the deck jingle, and swamped the sound of the rushing steam and everything, the men, closing up behind the skipper, who led us so gallantly over the side, far in advance, brave-hearted old sea dog that he was, bounded across the intervening bulwarks, and were the next instant engaged in all the maddening excitement of a hand-to-hand tussle with the black villains, pistol shot, sword cut and pike thrust coming in turn into play, amid a babel of hoarse shouts of rage and cheers and savage yells—mingled with the swish of blows from capstan bars, the loud reports of revolvers fired off at close range and the heavy thud of falling bodies as they tumbled headlong on the deck ever and anon, accompanied by some cry of agony or groan of pain too deep for utterance.
Aye, it was a discord of devilry that must have appeared a veritable pandemonium to the spirits of the air, were any such looking down on the wrathful, sanguinary scene from the clear blue heavens above, all radiant now with a golden glow that came from the west, where the declining sun was just beginning to sink below the horizon!
“Fuaghaballah, may the divvle take the hindmost!” cried Garry O’Neil, leaping after the skipper on to the poop of the Saint Pierre, a revolver in his right fist and a cutlass in his left, laying about him with a will amongst the mass of infuriated negroes who tried to resist his rush, clutching at his legs and arms in vain, for he seemed bewitched. “Come on wid ye, me darlints, an’ let us make mincemate of ’em, faith!”
I followed in his wake, but a crowd of our men, some of whom had served in the navy and were accustomed to the work, pushed me on one side, going into the thick of the fight themselves, and all was such a jumble of confusion that I hardly knew where I was until “a pretty tidy tap on the top of my head,” as Garry would have said, brought back my recollection in a very effective manner, when I found myself right in front of an extremely ugly-looking negro, whose appearance was not improved by a slice having been taken off the side of his face, and from which blood was streaming down all over his black body, and that destitute of clothing.
I noticed that this gentleman had a long piece of wood like a boat stretcher in his hands, with which he had evidently given me the gentle reminder I have mentioned, being brought to this conclusion by the fact that the rascal had it raised ready to deal another blow.
Putting up my arm instinctively to ward off the impending stroke that I saw coming, I cocked and levelled my revolver at him in an instant.
Before I could fire, however, some one behind me shoved me aside again, and crash came a heavy capstan bar down upon the negro’s skull, which I heard crack like a walnut shell as he dropped dead on his face.
“Golly, Mass’ Hald’n,” exclaimed Accra Prout, our stalwart mulatto cook, whose sinuous arm had thus incontinently settled the dispute between my sable opponent and myself. “I’se guess dis chile gib dat black debble goss, noh ow!”
But ere I could say a word to him for his timely aid, Accra Prout had bounded onward in front, and I then saw he was following Colonel Vereker, who had managed somehow or other, in spite of his lameness, to gain the deck of his old ship along with the rest of us.
Crack, crack, crack, went his revolver with venomous iteration from the other side of the vessel, where he was standing by the bulwarks, close to the hatchway of the companion-ladder leading to the cabin below, which he was apparently endeavouring to reach, while a crowd of Haytians barred his further progress towards those imprisoned in the cabin, whom they thus prevented his releasing, a fresh foe starting up for every one he disposed of, and a rough and terrible fight going on all round him all the time.
“’Top a minnit, Mass’ V’reker!” shouted Accra Prout, darting into the middle of the throng, clearing a pathway for himself with the capstan bar. “I’se here; I’se come help you soon!”
“A thousand devils!” hissed a tall black near by—a man with a large, crinkly, ink-black moustache, and certainly with the most satanic visage I had ever beheld before. “A thousand devils!” repeated he, giving him a thrust with a large knife that pierced poor Accra’s arm, and making him drop the capstan bar. “Take care of yourself—beast!”
A cry from the colonel told me who this was.
“Ah, villain, villain!” he sang out, looking him full in the face and grinding his teeth and trying with all his might, but vainly, to get at him through the press of struggling figures by whom he was surrounded. “I’ve been looking for you, Marquis des Coupgorges!”
The black scoundrel gave out a shrill laugh like that of a hyena, as Colonel Vereker had described it to us when telling his yarn.
“Pardon me, sir, I am here,” he yelled out mockingly. “I am here. I do not run away like your white trash! Why don’t you come and fight me? Bah! I spit on you, my fine plantation colonel. When I get at you I will serve you just as I did your sly slave the other day, whom you sent to betray us, though you, yourself, were too great a coward to come amongst us, yes, to come amongst us yourself. Aha! colonel.”
He said this in plain English, which language he spoke as fluently as he did French, the native language of Hayti, uttering his abusive threats loud enough for us to hear every syllable; but though I aimed at him while he was speaking twice point blank, and my revolver spoke out quite as loudly as he, while the colonel likewise shot at him and the skipper made a slash in his direction with his cutlass, the miscreant escaped all our attacks without a single wound, dodging away from us amongst his dusky compatriots, who were now pretty thickly mixed up with our men in a fierce mêlée, at the further end of the poop, overlooking the waist below.
In the midst of this awful scrimmage there came a wild rush aft of all the remaining blacks who had been engaged with some of the hands amidships, pursued by our second boarding party, led by Mr Fosset and Stoddart, who had made their way over the bows and cleared the fo’c’s’le, fighting onward step by step along the upper deck; and hemmed in fast thus, between two fires, the black desperadoes made a last stand, refusing to surrender, or throw down their arms in spite of all promises of quarter on our part.
All of them could see for themselves how completely overmatched they were, and must have known the utter uselessness of attempting any further resistance to us; but the mutineers of the negro portion of the Saint Pierre’s crew, who were now in the majority, feared to give in owing to the fact of their believing they would be ultimately hanged if taken alive after the atrocities they had committed; so being of the opinion they were bound to be killed in any case, they determined apparently, if die they must, they would die fighting.
Whatever might be their motive or conviction, I will give them the credit of being plucky, and must say that they fought bravely, though with a ferocity that was more than savage, to the bitter end, their last rally on the break of the poop being the fiercest episode of the fray, several hand-to-hand combats going on at one and the same time with hand pikes and capstan bars whirling about over the heads of those engaged, where cutlass cuts were met with knife-thrusts from the formidable long-bladed weapons the negroes carried in their hands only to sheathe them in the bodies of their white antagonists.
My brain got dizzy as I watched the mad turmoil and my blood was at fever heat, taking part in the fight too, you may be sure, whenever I saw an opening, and dealing a blow here or parrying one there, as chance arose, with the best of them, young though I was, and totally inexperienced in such matters!
It was coming near to the finish, being too warm work to continue much longer, and I think all of us had had pretty well enough of it, when, looking round for Colonel Vereker, whom I suddenly missed from among the combatants, I saw him struggling with one of the blacks in a regular rough and tumble tussle on the deck.
The two were rolling about close to the after skylight from whence we had observed the flash of the pistol shot as we approached the ship, and which the colonel had been trying to get near to ever since he boarded her, but had been prevented from reaching by one obstacle or another until now, when this negro clutched hold of him and forced him back again.
He and the Haytian were tightly locked in a deadly embrace, the negro gripping him with both arms round the body, and the colonel endeavouring to release his revolver hand, the two rolling over and over on the deck towards the rail forward.
“Ha!” muttered the colonel, who was hard pressed, through his set teeth. “Only let me get free.”
Strangely enough, the glass of the skylight above the spot where the pair were struggling was instantly shattered from within, as if in response to his muttered cry; and with a loud bark that could have been heard a mile off, a big dog burst forth from the opening, making straight for the colonel and his relentless foe.
Then there came a startled yell from the negro, who, releasing his late antagonist, staggered to his feet.
“Holy name of—” he screamed out in wild affright, but he had not time to reach the concluding word of his sentence—the name of his patron saint, no doubt—“the devil!”
For before he could get so far, giving a fierce growl, the dog at once sprang up at him, his fangs meeting in the Haytian’s throat, whereupon the latter, toppling backwards over the poop-rail, fell into the waist below, with the dog hanging on to him; and I noticed presently that both were dead, the brave animal who had come so opportunely to the rescue of the colonel, his master, being stabbed to the heart by a knife which the negro still held in his lifeless hand, while his own neck had been torn to pieces by the dog whom death could not force to relinquish his grip!
Immediately running up to the colonel, who was feebly trying to rise, his wrestle with the black having crippled his wounded leg and arm, I helped him to his feet as quickly as I could, while others clustered round to shelter us.
“Poor Ivan, true as steel in death as in life!” he faintly muttered, glancing from the break of the poop on the two bodies huddled together below, the blood of the faithful dog flowing with that of his ruthless foe into a crimson pool that was gradually extending its borders from the middle of the deck to the lee scuppers. “He has defended my little Elsie, I am sure, to the last, likewise, even as he defended me. I hope and trust my child is still safe in the cabin. Help me aft, my lad, to see; quick, quick!”
Of course I assisted him as well as I could under the circumstances, but as he limped along towards the companion-hatchway, the leader of the desperadoes, that villainous “marquis,” who I thought had met with his just deserts long since, not having seen him for some little time among the other fighters, most unexpectedly jumped from the rigging in front of the colonel and aimed a vindictive blow at him with a marline-spike.
This must have settled the colonel if it had fallen on his uncovered head. Fortunately though, dropping quickly the colonel’s arm, I fended off the blow with the revolver I held in my hand, while at the same time I gave the scoundrel a drive in the face that must have astonished his black lordship a good deal, for my clenched fist met him square on the mouth and shook his teeth, making them rattle, as well as disarranging the twist of his crinkly moustache!
He came at me with a snarl like an angry tiger, and then, hugging me tight, with his hideous black face thrust close against mine, and his muscular arms pressed tightly around my ribs, he squeezed every ounce of breath out of my body.
I thought my last hour had come.
But help came to my aid from a most unlooked-for quarter.
“Ah! you blackguard,” cried a voice that sounded dimly in my ears, my head at the time seeming to be whirling round like the arms of a windmill from the sense of suffocation and the rush of blood to the brain. “Coward! miscreant! you are here again.”
Breathless though I was, I was so surprised, and indeed frightened at the voice and accent of the speaker, which I immediately recognised, that I at once came to myself and opened wide my half-closed eyes.
Good heavens! Shall I ever forget the sight? Yes; it was Captain Alphonse, whom I had last seen only half an hour or so previously in the skipper’s cot on board the Star of the North, when Garry O’Neil said he would probably never wake to consciousness again in this life, or move out of the skipper’s state room!
Here he was though, all the same, looking like an apparition from the dead, wild, ghastly, awful, but quite sufficiently in his senses to recognise his terrible enemy, the pseudo “marquis.”
It is a scene I shall never forget, as I remarked before.
Like poor Ivan, and with equal ferocity, the Frenchman sprang at the ugly villain’s throat, the whole lot of us tumbling headlong on the deck together, which caused the wretch to release me in order to protect himself from Captain Alphonse, who, kneeling on the top of him, hammered him against the bulwarks as though trying to beat the life out of him.
Making a last desperate effort, the Haytian “marquis” gripped his antagonist round the waist as he previously gripped me, dragging him down beside him again; and then, as the two came with all their might against the side of the ship where the port flap was loose, the whole of the planking gave way, and poor Captain Alphonse, with that scoundrel the black “marquis,” crashed through the splintering wood together, falling with a heavy splash overboard into the sea beneath, going to the bottom locked in each other’s arms—a terrible ending to the terrible episode of this, their last meeting.
For the minute the colonel seemed overwhelmed with grief at this awful and sudden termination of poor Captain Alphonse’s life, and we would all sooner have seen him die unconsciously if not quietly, in his bed; but such are the ways of Providence, and we cannot control them!
But this day certainly witnessed a series of surprises, so it seemed to me, the most wonderful things happening every moment.
Colonel Vereker had dragged himself as well as he could up to where I lay on the deck, after being set free from the bearlike hug of the negro, helping me up on my legs in the same Good Samaritan way in the which I had saved him shortly before; and we were both looking over the side, talking excitedly of the dreadful catastrophe that had just happened, and wondering whether the poor captain’s body would rise to the surface again, when all of a sudden, something bright crossing the deck caught my eye like a flash of light, and I heard the sound of light and hurried footsteps.
Wheeling round hastily I was amazed at the beautiful object that met my gaze, for I saw standing there, only a pace or two off, a lovely young girl, with a profusion of long silky hair of a bright golden hue, that streamed in a tangled mass over her shoulders, and reaching down almost to her feet.
“My father, my dear father!” she exclaimed in broken and ecstatic tones, her voice sounding to me like the soft cooing of a dove, as she flew and nestled herself into the outstretched arms of the colonel, who had also turned round at her approach, some sympathetic feeling having warned him of her coming, telling him who it was even before he saw her.
“Oh, my father! my father! At last, at last!”
And then, unable to control herself longer, she burst into a passion of tears and sobs.
Colonel Vereker, on his part, was equally overcome.
“God be thanked!” cried he, raising his face to heaven, clasping her at the same time fondly to his heart and kissing her trembling lips again and again. “My darling one, my own little daughter, whom I thought I had lost for ever, but whom the good God has preserved to be the delight of my eyes again, my little one, my precious!”
For a few minutes I too had a lump in my throat, but turned aside, and then, not wishing to appear to be observing them, I left them alone and went off to another part of the ship.
Chapter Twenty Five.
Hors de Combat.
A grand hurrah just then burst forth from the deck below us, where the skipper and most of the men were massed, telling as plainly as triumphant cheer could tell, that the fight was ended and that victory had crowned our arms with success. I rushed back to tell the colonel.
On hearing my footsteps, however, little Elsie turned round and caught sight of me.
“Oh, my father!” said she, untwining herself from the colonel’s embrace, though she still nestled up close to him, as she stared at me shyly, with a puzzled look on her mignonne face. “Why, who is this young sir, my father? I seem to know him, and yet I do not remember having ever seen him before!”
“Look at him again, darling one,” said her father, petting her caressingly, while another hearty cheer went up from the hands in the waist. “He is Señor Dick Haldane, a gallant young gentleman whom you must thank, my little daughter, for having saved my life.”
At this the graceful young girl advanced a step or two towards me, and catching hold of my hand, before I could prevent her, kissed it, greatly to my confusion; as albeit it was an act expressive amongst the Spanish with whom she had been brought up, of deferential courtesy and gratitude, but it made me blush up to my eyes and feel hot all over.
“A thousand thanks, sir,” she began; but as she raised her eyes to my face in thus giving utterance to her thanks for having, as the colonel had told her, saved her father’s life, a flood of recollection seemed to come upon her, and she exclaimed:
“Ah, I remember now! My father, yes, he is like the gentleman whom I saw on the deck of the steamer that awful night when the negroes rose up against us—last Friday, was it not? But it seems so long ago to me! You, you naughty papa, would not believe that your little girl had seen anything at all, not even a ship, but that I only fancied it in my foolishness. However, there is the same steamer that I saw (pointing with her finger to the Star of the North), and here is the same, for I am sure he is the same, the very same young officer. Am I not right?” And looking up at her father, she exclaimed, “Your little girl told the truth after all.”
“And you, young lady,” said I, smiling at her recognition of me, strange coincidence as it was, corroborating my own experience of the same eventful night, “yes; you are the same little girl I saw on board the ‘ghost-ship,’ as all the men here called your vessel, not believing, likewise, my story that I had seen her or you either. Yes, I would have known you anywhere. You are the girl whom I saw with the dog!”
The next moment I could have bitten my tongue out, though, for my thoughtlessness in alluding to the poor dog; for at the bare mention of him Elsie’s face, which had a sort of absent, wandering look about it still, at once lighted up, and she glanced round in all directions.
“Ah, I declare I had quite forgotten Ivan in the joy and happiness of seeing you again, my father,” she exclaimed excitedly. “Where is he, the brave fellow? Ivan, Ivan, you dear old dog. Come here; come here, sir, directly!”
She looked round again, with a half smile playing about the corners of her pretty rosebud of a mouth and a joyous light in her eyes, expecting her faithful friend and companion would come bounding up to her side; but she now waited and watched and listened in vain, there being no response to her summons either by bark or bound or wag of poor Ivan’s bushy tail.
Nor would there be any more, for his ringing bark was hushed, his body and tail alike stiff and cold, while his noble heart which only throbbed with affection for those whom he loved when living, had stopped beating for aye.
“My dear child, poor Ivan is dead!” said Colonel Vereker tenderly after a short pause, drawing the young girl up to him so that she might not see the gruesome sight on the deck below. “The brave dog sacrificed his life for mine, and but for his help, little one, I should not now be by your side.”
This account of the poor animal’s heroic end, however, did not comfort little Elsie, who gave a startled glance at her father’s face; where, seeing something there that made her comprehend her loss, she buried her golden head on his breast, sobbing as though her heart would break.
“Poor, poor, dear Ivan; he never left me once, never, my father, since you—you went out of the cabin that last night and told him to watch me!” she exclaimed presently, in halting accents between her convulsive sobs, neither the colonel or myself dry-eyed as we listened to her tale, you may be sure. “But—but all at once, after all the noise and that dreadful firing that seems now to go through my ears, I—I heard your voice quite distinctly on the deck; and so, too, did poor Ivan, for I saw him instantly put up his ears, while he whined and looked beseechingly at us.”
“Well, after that, my child,” said the colonel, on her stopping for the moment, overcome with emotion, “what happened next?”
“He made a dash at the cabin table and jumped up on it, and then the poor fellow growled savagely at some one outside. Then—then before I could hold him back he made a most desperate spring and sprung right up through the glass roof on the top of the sky—skylight, and he must have cut himself very very much. Poor, poor doggie! And now you say my poor Ivan is dead, and that I shall never see the dear good faithful creature again. Oh, my father!”
At this point the young girl again broke down.
Nor were her tears a mere passing tribute of grief. For, though dead, Ivan is not forgotten, like some people, the remembrance of whom is as evanescent as the scent of the flowers that hypocritical mourners may ostentatiously scatter upon their graves; his little mistress, little no longer, preserving his memory yet green in her heart of hearts, close to which she wears always a small locket containing likenesses of her father and mother, together with a miniature of Ivan—her father’s preserver—with a tiny lock added from the brave dog’s curly black coat.
Some ultra-sanctimonious persons may feel inclined to cavil with this association on Elsie’s part of “immortal beings,” as they would style her parents, and the recollection she cherishes of a “dead brute,” because, forsooth, they hold that her four-footed favourite had no soul; but were these gentry to broach the subject before her, being a somewhat outspoken young lady from her foreign bringing up, which puts her beyond the pale of boarding-school punctiliousness, she would probably urge that she estimated poor Ivan’s sagacious instinct combined with his courage and noble self-sacrifice, at a far higher level than the paltry apology for a soul that passes current for the genuine article with matter-of-fact religionists of the stamp of her questioner.
But Elsie was “little Elsie” still, at the time of which I am speaking, and too young, perhaps, for such thoughts to occur to her mind, which at the moment was too full of her loss.
The cheering that had followed the last tussle of our men with the black mutineers had now ceased, and all these things happening, you must understand, much more rapidly than I can talk or attempt to chronicle them, the skipper, with Mr Fosset and Garry O’Neil, came hurriedly up on the poop.
Both expressed their unbounded delight at seeing the child was safe and in the care of her father.
Sure, an’ what’s the little colleen cryin’ for? eagerly inquired Garry, his smoke-begrimed face, which bore ample evidence of the desperate struggle in which he had been so gallantly engaged, wearing a look of deep commiseration as he gazed from her father to me, and then again at her. “Faith, I hope she’s not been hurt or frightened?”
“No, thank God!” replied the colonel huskily. “Grieving for her poor dog Ivan, who—”
“Och yes, I saw the noble baste,” interrupted Garry in his quick, enthusiastic way. “Begorrah, colonel, he fought betther than any two-legged Christian amongst us, an’ I can’t say more than that for him, sure, paice to his name!”
Before he could say anything further, and you know he was a rare one to talk when once he commenced, the skipper advanced again, holding out his hand to the colonel exclaiming— “Yes, thank God you are all right and that your little child is safe, and escaped any harm from those scoundrels, except her nerves probably being much shaken, but that she will soon recover at her age—and I told you she should be restored to you, you know. By George! Though, we’ve paid them out at last for demon’s work aboard here!”
“The devils!” ejaculated Colonel Vereker savagely, his mood changing as he recollected all he had seen and suffered at their hands. “Have you killed them all?”
“All but half a dozen of the rascals, whom we had a rare hunt after through the hold and fo’c’s’le before we could collar them. They are fast bound now, though, lashed head and feet to the mainmast bitts; and it will puzzle them to wriggle themselves loose from old Masters’ double hitches, I know. Besides which, two of our men are guarding there, with boarding-pikes in their hands and orders to run ’em through the gizzard if they offer to stir.”
“Faith,” observed Garry O’Neil reflectively, “It was as purty a bit of foighting as I ivver took a hand in, whilst it lasted!”
“But let us go and see what has become of all those chaps below—all those you mentioned as belonging to the French crew, whom you left on board with your daughter,” went on the skipper. “We saw the flash of a pistol, you remember, when we came up alongside, and somebody must have prevented those villains from getting into the cabin, or else—”
He stopped here and looked meaningly at Elsie.
“Heavens!” exclaimed the colonel, attempting to rise, but falling back on the hen-coop along the side of the bulwarks he had been using for a temporary seat, he seemed so utterly exhausted. “Ah, those brave fellows, I was almost forgetting them; but I can’t move, Señor Applegarth, or I should have gone down before this to see what had become of my old comrades; but I’m helpless, as you see.”
Elsie now lifted her head, looked up and turned towards the skipper.
“They are all wounded,” said she, clasping her hands together and with a look of fright on her face. “Two of the men—the French sailors, I mean—and the English gentleman.”
“That’s the little Britisher I told you about, who was so plucky,” explained the colonel—“Mr Johnson.”
“Well, my father,” continued the young girl, “these three rushed down the stairs into the cabin, shortly before the steamer thumped against the side of our ship, when I thought we were all going down to the bottom of the sea.”
“Yes, my child,” said the colonel encouragingly, “go on and tell us what happened next.”
“The English gentleman spoke to me and said that the terrible negroes had conquered them all on deck, but that he and the two Frenchmen had escaped from them in time, and were going to barricade the doorway leading down from above to prevent the black men from coming below and murdering us all.
“He told me, though, did the kind English gentleman, that I must not be frightened and all would come right in the end, for that they had seen a very large steamer approaching, coming quite close to us, and that they would be able, he thought, to hold out until we were all rescued. They then piled up heaps and heaps of things against the door at the foot of the stairs where the sailors remained; then the Englishman stood on the table, under the skylight, to keep the negroes from getting through there. It was the Englishman who fired at them through the glass, for he was the only one who had a pistol, and he made a hole and then through that we heard all the shrieks and the noise of the pistols; and your voice, my father, Ivan heard, and then he jumped up through the hole, making a much bigger one, and ran to your rescue, my dear, dear father.”
“But what has become of Monsieur Boisson, and Madame all this time; where were they?” asked the colonel, on Elsie thus concluding the account of what had occurred under her immediate notice, a little sob escaping her involuntarily at the mention of her poor dog’s name, and at the recollection of what she had just witnessed. “Did they do anything, my dear child to help themselves, or you?”
“No, my father,” she replied, apparently surprised at the question. “They are still in the big cabin at the end of the saloon where you left them when you went away, and, I’m afraid they are very ill indeed, for all the time the firing was going on overhead Madame was screeching and screaming, and I am sure I heard Monsieur groaning a good deal. He was doing so again just now, before I found my way upstairs to you, to find you, and to see what had happened, everything had become so suddenly still after all the noise, and—and—those—awful horrible yells of the negroes—oh! I—I—can hear them still!”
She turned quite pale when uttering the last words, words spoken with visible effort, shuddering all over and hiding her face again on her father’s shoulder.
“Faith, sor, don’t ask her any more questions,” cried Garry, “but we’d betther be sayin’ afther those poor fellows ourselves, an’ at once, too!”
“Do quickly, sir doctor,” said the colonel, “and I only wish I could come with you! but—”
“Now jist you shtop where ye are, me friend,” rejoined Garry, putting out his hand to prevent his stirring from his seat. “Sure the cap’en an’ me, with Dick Haldane here, will be enough to look afther ’em all.”
With this he made for the companion-way and descended the “stairs,” as Elsie, ignorant of nautical nomenclature, called the ladder, the skipper following close behind him.
On getting to the bottom we found the panels of the door smashed in, though of hard oak, strengthened with cross battens of the same stout wood, which showed to what fierce assault it had been subjected, the furniture piled up against it from within having duly prevented the negroes from finally forcing an entrance, as well, no doubt, as our appearance on the scene.
This barricade had, however, been now partly removed, probably to allow of little Elsie’s exit, and, quickly pitching the remaining obstacles aside, the three of us managed to squeeze ourselves inside the cabin, which was in such a state of confusion, with the long table overturned to serve as a breastwork for the gallant defenders and the settees and lockers turned away from the deck, as well as the glass of the skylight all smashed, that it looked like a veritable “Hurrah’s vest” as we sailors say.
On a pile of cushions belonging to the lounge aft—the only piece of furniture that was left intact in the place, I believe—lay the brave men who had stubbornly held the ship to the last against the mutineers.
All were covered with blood and blackened by powder and so utterly worn out from fatigue in battling throughout the night and day that had almost elapsed since the colonel had left them, besides being crippled by the injuries they had received in the fray, that they hardly moved on our entrance, though one—a little chap whom I judged to be the Englishman spoken of by the colonel and Elsie—brightened up as we bent over him, a look of satisfaction and content stealing over his drawn and haggard face, as we cauld see from the rays of the setting sun streaming down through the broken skylight, exposing the utter desolation around.
He was the first to speak.
“I’m afeard you’ve come too late for us, sirs,” said he slowly, with a deep groan of pain. “Those damned niggers have done for me, one of them giving me a dig of his knife in the ribs—did it through the doorway just now, when the fight were nearly over. You might do summat, though, for my companions here, who stood up to the darkies like Britons, in spite of them being only Frenchmen, though that ain’t their fault. But how’s the little girl? I hope she’s all right. Tell her father, if he’s alive—and I feel almost sure I heard his voice awhile ago up on deck—tell him that I kept my word, sirs, and fought for her to the last. I think I’m dying now, and—I—must—leave—off. But listen while I’ve a little breath, for I want to say something. My name is Robert Johnson, and my old mother, God bless her, lives at Camberwell, near London. You’ll find all my papers in my pocket and a letter with the address, and if any of you chances to be going back to England as I were, worse luck, you’d be doing a favour by seein’ her and letting her know why I didn’t turn up home this Christmas as I promised her. I know you will. I’m going now, I’m so tired. Good-night to you all—good-night—good—”
As he said this he gradually fell back on the cushion he was resting against, and his eyes closed.
Captain Applegarth and I both thought him dead.
Not so, however, Garry O’Neil.
“Sure, he’s ounly fainted,” exclaimed the Irishman; “run, Dick, me bhoy, an’ say if there’s sich a thing as a stooard’s pantry knockin’ about anywheres in those latituodes, wid a dhrop of water convanient. That an’ a taste of this aqua vitae here, which, the saints be praised, I took the precawshin to put in me pocket afore we shtarted on this blissid and excoitin’ skermoish, this will very soon fetch back a little loife into the plucky little beggar ag’in!”
I had no difficulty in finding the steward’s pantry and a breaker of water, with a tin dipper attached, speedily carrying some back and, by our joint ministrations, and with it bathing his face and hands and pouring some between his lips, little Mr Johnson at last opened his eyes and began to breathe.
After a time and a certain amount of patience he opened his eyes wider, and became conscious, and later on was induced to swallow down a mixture out of his own special bottle that Garry carried, and we were at last delighted to see quite a broad grin spread over his round good-natured and somewhat comical face.
“By Jingo, sir!” said he, after a pause and rather long silence, and after he had drained off the last drop of the elixir, with a sigh of gratitude that evidently came from his heart, “you’ve saved my life this time, and no mistake. I never thought I should taste a drop of good brandy again in this world.”
Chapter Twenty Six.
We part Company.
While Garry O’Neil and I were attending to the two French sailors who, though they had been a good bit knocked about in the course of the protracted struggle, were not seemingly very seriously hurt, suffering more, indeed, from want of proper food and rest than from the slight wounds they had received, we heard loud cries and a sort of dull moaning that appeared to proceed from the after part of the saloon.
Going thither at once, Captain Applegarth knocked with his knuckles on the panel of the closed door of one of the larger state rooms, running athwart the ship from whence the sounds proceeded.
“Hullo, within there!” he shouted, “what’s the matter? What’s the row? Come out!”
A shrill scream was the only response to his inquiries.
“What’s the matter?” repeated the skipper, speaking in a gentler tone. “You have nothing to fear. We’re all friends here!”
The cries and confused noises continued, however, and the skipper thereupon resumed his knocking, this time more forcibly, and with his fists aided by a kick from his heavy boot against the lower part of the still closed door.
At this imperative summons the shrieking ceased, and we heard a feeble voice within, calling out in French— “Mercy! for the love of God!” we could distinguish amidst a plentitude of sobs and violent groans in a deeper key. “Ah! brave Haytians! Have pity, and spare our lives!”
“Hang it all, you cowards, we’re not those cursed Haytians, and I wish you could have been left to their mercy! It is only what you deserve!” roared the skipper, infuriated and out of all patience at the Frenchwoman’s mistake and her appealing in such terms to the murderous scoundrels of whom we had made so summary an end. “We’re Englishmen; we’re your friends, I tell you, true-hearted British sailors, who have come to rescue you, so open the door!”
But Madame Boisson, who, of course, was his interlocutrice behind the door, remained obdurate.
“Ah! the false English,” she cried, “down with the pigs!”
At this the skipper laughed grimly, and all standing near him were much amused.
“She’s a good specimen of her race,” cried the captain. “They always abuse other nations and cry out that they are betrayed when ill luck comes to them, instead of trying to help themselves, as we perfidious Englishmen do.”
Finding it impossible to persuade her, though, to open the door of the cabin, which was bolted and barred within, the skipper sang out to me to go on deck and ask Elsie Vereker to come down and try what she could do, thinking that the obstinate prisoner would doubtless recognise the girl’s voice and so, through her means, be made more amenable to reason.
No sooner said than done.
Up I went and down the companion-way. I returned anon accompanied not only by Miss Elsie, but by the colonel as well, Garry O’Neil, who hurried up the ladder after me with that intent, insisting on his coming below so that he could the better attend to his wounded leg, which had broken out again and needed fresh dressing, and after some little difficulty Garry got him down in safety.
Thanks to Elsie’s pleadings, Madame Boisson at length capitulated, promising to come out of her retreat as soon as she had had time, “to make her toilet.”
“By George!” exclaimed the skipper, overhearing this and turning with an ironical grin to the colonel, who had his leg upon a chair, and Garry bustling about him, busy with bandages, “she’s a true Frenchwoman, as I said at the first. Fancy, after being imprisoned there in that stuffy cabin for four and twenty hours and imagining herself and husband might be murdered every minute by a lot of pirate scoundrels, thinking of nothing but titifying herself, instead of thanking God for their escape and rushing out at the very first opportunity, eager to be free. Strange creatures!”
“Heavens!” exclaimed the colonel, smiling at the other’s outburst. “It is true, but they’re all alike, and I’ve seen a good many of them, my friend.”
Presently out sailed Madame Boisson, who I noticed was a middle-aged and well-preserved woman, attired in an elaborate dressing gown with a profusion of bows and ribbons fluttering about it, and with a good deal of pearl powder or some other cosmetic of that sort on her face, and her cheeks tinted here and there with—well, colour.
Despite her screams and hysterics, however, there was no trace of a tear in her twinkling black eyes, although her fat little husband, who ambled meekly in her train, betrayed signs of great emotion, his red face all swollen from crying, and otherwise looking like a whipped cur.
Madame made a most gracious salute to us all, and, glancing at me with a spice of coquetry, to which she was evidently not unaccustomed, was pleased to observe, that I was “un beau garçon.”
In returning the skipper’s polite bow she happened to notice the poor wounded sailors lying on the cushions by the companion, and the blood all sprinkled about—a sight at which she turned up her nose, declaring very volubly that the place was like a “pigsty,” unfit for any lady to enter, and expressing her surprise at those “common seamen” being attended to and allowed to remain in the saloon, she having always understood that that apartment was only for “the use of the first-class passengers.”
The skipper, who understood her well enough, as I did too, having learnt the language at a French school near Rouen, was very angry at her remarks.
“Those men,” said he in his best Parisian, “are your own countrymen, all that are left of those who died to preserve the lives of you and your husband there, who ought to be ashamed of himself for skulking below while they were fighting on deck.”
Monsieur looked foolish, but said nothing in reply to this. Madame sniffed, and flashed her glittering black eyes, as if she could annihilate him at a glance.
“My brave Hercules!” she cried indignantly, “be easy. You have been out in the Bois and have established your reputation as a hero and have no need to notice the insulting remarks of this Englishman. But for you,” she added, turning angrily to the colonel, “this would not have happened.”
“I? Good Heavens!” exclaimed Colonel Vereker, greatly astonished at her turning on him thus. “Why, it was I who did all in my power to prevent Captain Alphonse from allowing those cursed blacks on board the ship in the first instance, but you and Monsieur Boisson, both of you, persuaded him to the contrary.”
“My God! dear Hercules, see how we are calumniated,” said the irate Frenchwoman, rather illogically, turning to her miserable atom of a husband, who gesticulated and shrugged his shoulders in response, and looking over the skipper and Colonel Vereker as if neither existed, she went on to remark to Elsie, who, however, did not appear to relish very much her conversation or endearments, that, “some persons whom she would not condescend to name, were, of monsters, the most infamous and ungrateful—men, indeed, of the gutter—but that she, the little one, was an angel.”
Here the skipper put an end to the interview. He had evidently seen and had enough of the Boissons, husband and wife, and, ascending the companion-ladder at the same time as Garry and myself, I heard him muttering to himself as he went along and just caught the following words: “To think—brave men—lose—valuable—save such—theirs—too dreadful. She frivolous—he—a—damned coward!” laying a rather strong emphasis on the last words.
We afterwards went down again, Garry and I, and managed between us to bring up little Mr Johnson, the brave fellow having picked up wonderfully after the attention we had given him, and the knife-thrust he had received from the negro was found to have only grazed his ribs, and he was anxious for fresh air, after his long imprisonment below, and to see and judge for himself how things were looking on deck after our scrimmage.
Here the light was waning and there was a good deal to be done.
“I think, Fosset,” said the skipper to our worthy first mate, who had been ordering matters forward while the former had come aft, “we had better muster the hands first so as to know who’s missing. I’m afraid several of our poor fellows have lost the number of their mess in the fight.”
“Aye, sir, they have,” replied Mr Fosset. “Poor Stoddart’s gone, for one!”
“Poor fellow, I am sorry,” exclaimed the captain with much feeling. “We couldn’t have lost a better man, for he was about the best we had on board, poor fellow—a good engineer, a good mess-mate, and good at everything he handled, besides being the finest fellow that ever wore shoe leather. How did it happen?”
“He was knifed by one of those black devils, sir, as he led the boarders forrad!”
“Poor Stoddart! I am sorry to lose you! Well, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, and all my words will never bring him back again. Mr O’Neil, just muster the men in the waist and let us know the worst at once!”
“Faith, ye’re roight, sor; we’d betther count noses an’ have the job over,” returned Garry, sotto voce, singing out in a louder key to the survivors of the fray, who were grouped in the waist about the mainmast, where the remaining Haytians who had not been killed outright were tied up feet to the wrists, as the skipper had told Colonel Vereker when he came up. “Now all you Star of the Norths that are still alive come over here to starboard; the chaps that are d’id, sure, can shtop where they are!”
The hands laughed at this Hibernian way of putting the matter to them, and answered their names readily on Garry proceeding to read out the muster roll from a paper he had drawn out of his pocket—all, that is, save those that had fallen, eight in number, including poor Stoddart, our energetic second engineer, and one of his firemen who had volunteered to swell the boarding party, as well as six of our best sailors amongst the foremast hands.
Of the rest of the crew four were badly hurt and a few slightly wounded. Spokeshave was one of these latter, having, unfortunately, the end of his nose—that prominent feature of his—cut clean off by a slash from a cutlass; but the majority, we were glad to find, mostly escaped unscathed.
Seeing old Masters all right, I thought of his morbid forebodings before we came up with the ship, and determined to take a rise out of him.
“I’m awfully sorry about the old bo’sun,” I said with a wink to Garry, right behind his back. “He wasn’t a bad seaman, but an awful old grumbler, and so superstitious that he funked his own shadow and daren’t walk up a hatchway in the dark. Poor old chap, though, it’s a pity he’s dead; I shall miss him if only from not hearing his continued growling over things that might happen.”
“Well I’m blessed!” cried old Masters, completely flabbergasted at this exordium of mine; “I never thought, Mister Haldane, to hear you speak ag’in me like that. I allays believed you was a friend, that I did.”
I pretended not to see him, and so too did Garry O’Neil, “tumbling to my game,” as the saying goes, while I went on with my chaff.
“How did he die?” I asked. “Was he killed at the first rush?”
“Faith, I can’t say corrictly,” replied Garry in a very melancholy tone of voice. “I’m afeard care carried him off, somehow or other, as it killed the cat, for he war the most disconsolate, doleful, down-hearted chap I ivver saw piping the hands to dinner. An’ so he’s d’id! Poor old bo’sun! we’ll nivver see his loike ag’in.”
“Lord bless you!” cried old Masters angrily, stepping up nearer and confronting us, “I’m not dead at all, I tell you—I tell you I’m not—I’m blessed if I am. Can’t you see me here alive and hearty afore you? Look at me.”
“Ah, it’s his ghost!” I said, with an affected and tremulous start. “He told me, poor fellow, he felt himself doomed, and nothing could save him; and I suppose his spirit wants to prove to me he wasn’t a liar, as I always thought he was, the old sinner!”
This was too much for Garry, and he couldn’t hold in any longer, and both of us roared at Masters, who looked scared; and, though angry and highly incensed with us at first, was only too glad at its being but a joke, and not a fact that he was dead, to bear us any ill-feeling long.
We were horrified when we were told later on, while we were committing to the deep the corpses of those slain—negroes and white men impartially sharing the same grave beneath the placid sea, at rest like themselves, the breeze having died away again soon after sunset—that Etienne Brago and François Terne, the two wounded sailors we had left below with the Boissons, and little Mr Johnson and the colonel and Elsie of course, that these were the only ones left of the thirty odd souls on board the Saint Pierre when she sailed from La Guayra a fortnight before!
After all the bodies had been buried in their watery tomb, not forgetting that of poor Ivan, who we all thought merited an honoured place by the side of his biped brethren of valour—well, after all this had been done the skipper had the pumps rigged and the decks sluiced down to wash away all traces of the fray.
A council of war was then held between us all on the poop, the skipper of course presiding, and the colonel coming up from the cabin to take part in the proceedings, as well as old Mr Stokes from our ship, where he had remained attending singlehanded to the duties of the engine-room, denying himself, as Garry O’Neil remarked, “all the foin of the foighting!”
This conclave had been called for the purpose of deciding what was to be done with the Saint Pierre and the captured black pirates from whom we had salvaged her, and without much deliberation it was pretty soon decided, on the colonel’s suggestion, to send the ship to her destined port, Liverpool, taking the negroes in her, so that they could be tried before a proper court in England for the offence they had committed. “It’s of no use your fetching them up to New York,” said the colonel, “for though I’m an American myself and am proud of my nationality, I must confess those Yanks of the north mix up dollars and justice in a way that puzzles folk that are not accustomed to their way of holding the scales.”
The skipper was of the same opinion as Colonel Vereker; so, the matter having been settled, a navigating party was selected to work the Saint Pierre across the Atlantic, with Garry O’Neil as chief officer. The skipper was unable to spare Mr Fosset, and Garry was all the more fit in every way for the part, as he would be able to look after the wounded French sailors, who would naturally go in the ship as they were the principal witnesses against the blacks on the charges that would be brought against them of “piracy on the high seas.”
It was dark when all these details were finally arranged, and all of them went back aboard on our vessel for rest and refreshment, the colonel and his daughter, of course, accompanying us.
Madame and Monsieur Boisson, however, could not be made to leave the ship, saying they would not do so—Madame, that is, said it, and the brave Hercule, following her lead as usual, “would not leave,” said she repeatedly, “until they once more touched terra firma,” and not wishing they should be starved for their obstinacy, the skipper ordered Weston to look after the happy pair and provide them with food at the same time as he did the wounded and prisoners.
The two vessels remained for the night, still lashed alongside for better security, all hands being too tired out besides to be able to do anything further beyond “turning in” and getting as much rest and sleep as they could after the fatigue and excitement of the day.
Next morning at sunrise Garry O’Neil went back to his ship with his crew of eight men—all the skipper was able to spare him—and by breakfast time they had made her all atauto, bending new sails, which they found below in the forepeak, in place of the tattered rags that hung from some of the yards, and otherwise making good defects, preparing the vessel for her passage home.
We were all sorry to part with Garry even for the short period that would elapse before he would rejoin the old barquey, for he was the life of all us aboard; but the same regret was not felt for Master Spokeshave when we saw him go over the side to accompany the Irishman, the skipper having so decreed, as his assistant navigator, the damage to his nose not necessarily affecting his “taking the sun,” though it might interfere with the little beggar’s altitudes of another character.
By eight bells all the details necessary under the circumstances were satisfactorily arranged, including the transfer of the effects belonging to the colonel and Miss Elsie, these two preferring to voyage with us, unlike their whilom passengers, the Boissons, who remained in their old quarters, going with “Captain Garry,” as we all dubbed our mess-mate on his promotion to a separate command; and half an hour or so later a splendid breeze just then springing up from the westwards and flecking the still blue water with buoyant life, the two ships parted company amid a round of enthusiastic cheers that only grew faint as the distance widened them apart, the Saint Pierre sailing off right before the wind, with everything set below, and aloft, across the ocean on her course for Saint George’s Channel, while we braced our yards sharp up and bore away full speed ahead in the opposite direction, bound for New York, which port we safely reached without further mishap four days later.