The Three Commanders Part 11

The darkness was greater than ever. The rain indeed, even by itself, was thick enough to hide any objects except close to. In about an hour it cleared off again, when, on looking out for number one prize, he could nowhere distinguish her. "I suppose Gordon and Desmond judged it prudent to lower their sail; they will be hoisting it again presently,"

he said to himself. Soon afterwards he thought he made her out, rather more over the port quarter than she had been before. Yes, he was certain of it, though she seemed to him farther off than she had hitherto been; still, if the mids.h.i.+pmen had lowered their sail that was to be expected.

Adair, still believing that all was right, continued his course, eager to reach the island, and to arrange for despatching the two dhows to the port of adjudication; though he had no doubt that they both would prove lawful prizes. When morning at length broke, dhow number two was nowhere in sight. This made him somewhat anxious, and he regretted that he had not shortened sail at first to allow her to come up. Still the mids.h.i.+pmen had their wits so completely about them, and Bird was so trustworthy a fellow, and fully alive to the importance of keeping an eye on the Arabs, that he had no very serious apprehensions about their safety.

A clump of trees rising in the centre of the island at length, to his infinite satisfaction, came in sight. He dropped his anchor in the small harbour formed by the coral reef which circled round the southern portion. He was seen coming in, and one of the boats pulled off to welcome him. He was informed that a vast number of dhows had been boarded, but none as yet captured, all being, as far as could be ascertained, lawful traders; though several had, like his prize, no small number of black pa.s.sengers on board.

"Depend upon it, then, you have been deceived," said Adair, "as I should, had I not the fortunate chance, by means of Pango, to discover the trick the rascally Arabs are playing us. All those black pa.s.sengers were really slaves, dressed up by their masters. However, we'll take care in future that their trick doesn't avail them, and they must take to some other dodge if they wish to escape us."

Jos Green, he found, had gone over towards the mainland, to watch for any vessels running in or out of Angoxa, or slipping by up the coast, and as he had been away for several days, it was expected that he would soon be back. Several times before going on sh.o.r.e Adair swept the horizon with his gla.s.s in search of the missing dhow, expecting every instant to see her sail, like the dark fin of a shark, rising above the waters. He looked, however, in vain. The other officers climbed, one after the other, to the look-out place, but came back with the report that no sail was in sight.

He at once, therefore, made up his mind to send the pinnace, with a fresh crew, in search of the dhow. The wind, though contrary, was slight, and she might reach the spot where the dhow had last been seen before nightfall, and, if any accident had happened to her, render a.s.sistance. His only dread was that she might have been leaky, as he knew to be the case with many such craft, and perhaps have gone down.

He and his men were pretty well worn--out from want of sleep and hard work. Having seen the slaves landed, and fresh hands placed in charge of the dhow and the Arab crew, he therefore lay down in his tent to obtain the rest he so much required. Completely exhausted, he slept on till morning.

His first inquiry on awaking was for the pinnace. She had not returned, nor had Green made his appearance. He naturally became more anxious than ever; something serious, he feared, must have happened to the mids.h.i.+pmen, or they would not have failed to have reached the island by that time.

He was on the point of despatching another boat, when the look-out man from the signal-station reported that a dhow was in sight coming across from the mainland. Her arrival was eagerly looked for. There could be no doubt that she was a prize made by Green. This was ascertained positively to be the case, and in about an hour she came to an anchor off the island, having Green's boat astern. The two remaining boats at once put off, Adair going in one of them, accompanied by Pango (Bango had gone with Green to act as his interpreter).

"Why," exclaimed Adair, as he drew near the dhow, "she's the very vessel we captured! and has, I hope, the mids.h.i.+pmen and the rest of the boat's crew on board."

Green hailed them from the deck as they approached. "Glad of your a.s.sistance," he said, "for I've got a pretty s.h.i.+pload of scoundrels, who gave us a tough job to take them."

These words made Adair feel more anxious than ever. He recognised the Arab skipper and Mustapha Longchops on deck, but neither of the mids.h.i.+pmen nor any of the men. He was quickly on deck and shaking hands with Green, though the dreadful feeling which oppressed him prevented him for some moments from speaking.

"Where are the mids.h.i.+pmen, Desmond and Gordon," he asked, "and the men I left on board this vessel?"

"You left?" exclaimed Green; "why, I only captured her last night, and had no notion that she had ever been in our hands before, except, by the bye, that Bango has tried to make me understand something which he had heard, though I confess I couldn't exactly comprehend his meaning."

"The night before last I left the mids.h.i.+pmen safe and sound, with four hands and a canoe towing astern," said Adair; "the canoe, I see, is gone, but they would certainly not have deserted the vessel. We must seize these scoundrels, the skipper and that black fellow, with the rest of the Arabs, at once, for I very much fear they have been guilty of some foul play."

Calling more of his men on board, Adair ordered them to handcuff the whole of the party. The Arabs looked somewhat alarmed, their skipper very much so. "What have you done with my officers and men?" asked Adair. The neG.o.da, recovering himself, with the coolest effrontery made the action of shaking hands, then pointed astern, as if to signify that those whom Adair was asking after had parted good friends and gone off in the canoe.

"A very likely tale," said Adair sadly; "let's try what Pango and his brother can make out of the old black chief." On this Green told them to hear what the old man had to say. They evidently spoke the same language. At last Pango, turning round to Adair, tried hard to give the information he had obtained. What with the numerous signs, and the few words of English uttered by the black, Adair understood that the old chief grieved for what had happened, but that he himself had nothing to do with it; that the Arabs had set upon the Englishmen, two of whom were below, had blindfolded them and thrown them overboard.

Adair and Green both interrogated their black friends, and each time came to the same sad conclusion. There could be no doubt that the two lads, Jerry Bird, and the other men had been foully murdered. Adair felt very much inclined to hang all the fellows at once, but of course this could not be thought of; they must first be tried, and there could be no doubt that they would be convicted. What satisfaction would it be to hang the scoundrels? Putting them to death would not probably prevent others from committing similar deeds, nor would it bring those who were lost to life.

It was necessary, however, to land the slaves at once, for the sake of preserving their health; for even during the last few hours several of the grown-up people had died, and nearly a dozen of the children; and others, it was clear, would not survive unless carried on sh.o.r.e, and supplied with better food and fresh water. Superintending this work occupied Adair, and prevented him from mourning over the loss of his young nephew and Archie. The party on sh.o.r.e had been occupied for some time in putting up huts for housing any slaves who might be brought to the island. These were soon filled with the women and children and the sick men. The others not so greatly requiring immediate shelter were set to work to put up some huts for themselves, an operation most of them seemed to understand very well.

In the meantime, the Arab crew were kept on board, under charge of an officer and a party of seamen. Towards evening the boat was seen returning, and Adair had some faint hopes that she might have obtained some information of the mids.h.i.+pmen, in case the skipper's version of the affair was true. Adair hurried down to meet her.

"We bring you no news of the missing ones," said the officer in charge; "we went as far as you directed, and then swept round insh.o.r.e, but no dhow could we see."

Adair, more out of spirits than he had ever been in his life before, got back to the camp. One of the men came running in with the information that a s.h.i.+p was in sight to the northward. Adair and several others hurried to the nearest point from which they could see her, and he and Green were both of opinion that she was the _Opal_. This was confirmed when she got near enough to make her number. Hopes were entertained that she was coming to take them off; for, though not exactly tired of the life they had been leading, they would gladly have gone to some other locality, where they would be likely to meet with better success than they could boast of hitherto. Adair, however, found himself wis.h.i.+ng that Murray had not come back. How could he face him with the account of the loss of the two mids.h.i.+pmen? Murray might blame him, and not unjustly, for want of judgment in leaving them in charge of a vessel manned by desperate ruffians, who would, of course, be glad of the opportunity to revenge themselves on their enemies. "Why did not I think of that before?" exclaimed poor Terence more than once.

However, he ordered the gig to be manned, and as soon as the corvette approached the anchorage, he pulled away for her. She had just brought up, and the hands were aloft furling sails, when his boat got alongside.

Murray was, of course, well pleased to see him, though struck by his grave looks.

"All hands are well, I hope? and the youngsters, have they managed to keep themselves out of mischief?" asked Murray.

Adair, a very unwonted thing, felt inclined to hang down his head, as, with a faltering voice, he told the story of their loss.

"You don't mean to say you left those two lads, with only four careless men, to manage a set of cut-throats!" exclaimed Murray.

"I am sorry to say I did, not supposing that the said cut-throats would venture to turn upon them," answered Adair.

"That's it, Adair, that's it," exclaimed Murray, more testily than he was accustomed to speak; "you are too apt not to consider the consequences of what you do, and, from want of judgment, the lives of those boys have been thrown away."

"Really, you are hard upon me," cried Adair. "I acted as well as the circ.u.mstances would allow, and it was my duty to try and get hold of the other dhow."

"You should have left a stronger force to keep in check a set of ruffians, with whom only a few minutes before you had been engaged in a struggle for life and death," said Murray; "they acted according to their instincts, and murdered the poor boys."

"I had no time to think of that or anything else," said Adair, about to turn away; "it was my duty to take the other dhow, and I succeeded in doing so."

Murray, observing how much Adair was moved, felt that he was speaking too harshly. "Well, well, I am sure you did as you considered best,"

said he. "It is a very sad affair, but I don't know that we ought to give them up as lost. You may have misunderstood the two blacks, though circ.u.mstances are strongly against the Arab captain. However, I will examine him and his crew and the old black chief, with the aid of Hamed, whom he can understand; and perhaps we may elicit something which will give us ground for hoping that they after all escaped."

"I wish I could think so," said Adair; "I shall blame myself as long as I live for their loss. I am certain they would not willingly have deserted their charge."

Murray, having ordered Hamed to accompany him, pulled off in his gig with Adair. He found the rest of the officers standing on the beach ready to receive him, and he at once issued orders to have the slave captain and his companions brought on sh.o.r.e. Two boats were on the point of putting off to bring them, when a loud report was heard, and thick wreaths of smoke were seen issuing from the dhow, followed almost directly by flames bursting out from all parts. The boats dashed on to rescue those on board; as they did so, they saw a number of men, whom they recognised as their s.h.i.+pmates, swimming towards them, but not the dark face of an Arab among them.

The boats quickly picked them up one after the other, none, happily, of the party left on board being missing. Neither the officer nor any of the men could account for the accident. They were all on deck, the sentry near the hold in which the prisoners were confined; suddenly an explosion occurred which lifted up a portion of the deck, and sent the sentry and two other men standing near him overboard. Flames instantly afterwards burst out both fore and aft, and the natural impulse of the rest was to leap into the water to save their lives. The master's a.s.sistant, who commanded the party, seeing that any attempt to rescue the prisoners would be utterly hopeless, to save his own life was compelled to follow his men.

Just as the last English seaman was picked up, the dhow's stern, already a ma.s.s of flames, lifted, and she glided down, bow foremost, beneath the surface; a few pieces of charred wood and bamboo marking the spot where she had lately floated.

"Serve the fellows right," observed several of the men who were watching the occurrence; "the hangman has been saved a job, and stout rope left for a better purpose."

Murray and Adair, although acknowledging that the murderers, as they deemed them, had met with a just fate, could not help regretting that all means of obtaining information as to what had become of the mids.h.i.+pmen and their companions had thus been lost.

"All I can now do," said Murray, "is to cruise over the ground the dhow must have traversed after you left her, and look out for the canoe, in case any of the party may have succeeded in getting into her. It is possible that some of them may have done so, although in this long interval they must have suffered fearfully for want of food."

As no time was to be lost, Murray returned on board, leaving Adair with his party still on the island. The corvette, immediately weighing anchor, stood away close--hauled to the eastward, that she might on another tack fetch the spot where her search was to begin. Murray's remarks had slightly raised Adair's hopes that one if not both of the mids.h.i.+pmen might have been saved, had they been hove overboard alive; but it was too probable that the Arabs would have knocked them on the head first, and then thrown them into the water. He expressed his thoughts to Green.

"I don't altogether give them up," answered Jos. "Mids.h.i.+pmen have a wonderful way of keeping in existence, and by some means or other they may have escaped, though I can't say how it may have happened."

Adair's anxiety prevented him from sitting quiet in his tent, and, in spite of the hot sun, he continued walking about, now visiting the look-out man, now seeing how the unfortunate slaves were getting on.

Pango and Bango were of great a.s.sistance in communicating with them and dissipating their fears, though their captors had taken good care to instil into their minds the belief that the Englishmen wished only to catch them for the sake of salting them down for food, or disposing of them in some other horrible manner. Poor creatures! what their future lot was to be no one could tell. One thing was certain: they had been torn from their homes and families, many of those dearest to them had been killed by the savage men-hunters, and they themselves had been treated with horrible cruelty.

The boats, as usual, were kept in readiness to start off at a moment's notice, while the look-out men had their eyes about them in search of any dhows running up the coast. "A sail in sight to the southward,"

shouted the man up the tree.

"What is she like?" asked Adair.

"Square-rigged vessel, sir, with a broad spread of white canvas."

Here was likely to be work. She might prove a Spanish or American vessel, or carrying the flag of one of the other powers which still permitted the slave-trade. If a slaver, she was not likely to yield tamely if she had a chance of escape. Many such vessels were known to be strongly armed, and to be commanded by daring fellows, who would be perfectly ready to fight if they saw a chance of success. All the boats, therefore, were manned, to be ready to attack her should she stand near the island; which, from the course she was steering, there was every probability she would do. Everyone looked forward to the work with satisfaction. The only fear was that she might be empty, and might simply be coming north to take in her slaves at Angoxa, or some other place farther north. Cutla.s.ses were buckled on, pistols freshly capped, and other usual preparations made when fighting was in hand.

The wind was somewhat light, but at length the stranger's courses rose above the horizon, when Jos Green, who had mounted to the signal-station, shouted out, "She's an English brig-of-war, and is making her number." Adair sent for the signal-book, and, inquiring the flag seen, quickly made her out as the _Romp_.

"Why, she's been on the East India station," he observed. "We shall soon know all about her, for she's evidently steering for the island, and the breeze seems to be freshening. She'll come to an anchor before long."