The Mutineers Part 25

Now some one called, "Ben! Ben Lathrop! Where are you?"

"Here I am," I cried as loudly as I could.

"Well, Ben, what's this? Are you wounded?"

It was Roger, and when he saw with whom I was talking he smiled.

"Well, Bennie," he cried, "so we've got a prisoner, have we?"

"No, sir," whimpered the man from Boston, "not a prisoner. I come over, I did."

"You what?"

"I come over--to your side, sir."

"How about it, Ben?"

"Why, so he says. We were having a pretty hard wrestling match, but he says it was to cover up his escape from the other party."

"How was I to get away, sir, if I didn't have a subterfoog," the prisoner interposed eagerly. "I _had_ to wrastle. If I hadn't have, they'd 'a' shot me down as sure as duff on Sunday."

For my own part I was not yet convinced of his good faith. He had gripped my throat quite too vindictively. To this very day, when I close my eyes I can feel his hard fingers clenched about my windpipe and his knees forcing my arms down on the b.l.o.o.d.y deck. He had let me go, too, only when we both knew that Captain Falk and his men had put off from the s.h.i.+p. It seemed very much as if he were trying to make the best of a bad bargain. But if, on the other hand, he was entirely sincere in his protestations, it might well be true that he did not dare come over openly to our side. The problem had so many faces that it fairly made me dizzy, so I abandoned it and tore open my clothes to examine the flesh wound on my shoulder.

"Ay," I thought, when I saw where the musket-ball had cut me at close range, "that was a friendly shot, was it not?"

Roger himself was not yet willing to let the matter fall so readily. His sharp questions stirred the man from Boston to one uneasy denial after another.

"But I tell you, sir, I come over as quick as I could."

Again Roger spoke caustically.

"But I tell you, sir, I did. And what's more, I can tell you a lot of things you'd like to know. Perhaps you'd like to know--" He stopped short.

Roger regarded him as if in doubt, but presently he said in a low voice, "All right! Say nothing of this to the others. I'll see you later."

Captain Falk and his crew, meanwhile, had moved away almost unmolested.

Their pikes and guns had held off the few natives who made a show of pursuing them, and the great majority of our allies were running riot on the s.h.i.+p, which was a sad sight when we turned to take account of the situation.

Three natives were killed and two were wounded, not to mention my injured shoulder among our own casualties; and two members of the other party in the crew were sprawled in grotesque att.i.tudes on the deck. Counting the one who was. .h.i.t by a spear and who had fallen out of the boat, it meant that Falk had lost three dead, and if blood on the deck was any sign, others must have been badly slashed. In other words, our party was, numerically, almost the equal of his. Considering the man from Boston as on our side, we were seven to their eight. The lantern that we now lighted revealed more of the gruesome spectacle, and it made me feel sick to see that both the man from Boston and I were covered from head to foot with the gore in which we had been rolling; but to the natives the sight was a stupendous triumph; and the cook, when I next saw him, was walking down the deck, looking at the face of one dead man after another.

By and by he came to me where, overcome by a wave of nausea, I had sat down on the deck with my back against the bulwark. "Dey ain't none of 'em Kipping," he said grimly. Then he saw my bleeding shoulder and instantly got down beside me. "You jest let dis yeh ol' n.i.g.g.e.r took a hand," he cried. "Ah's gwine fix you all up. You jest come along o' me!" And helping me to my feet, he led me to the galley, where once more he was supreme and lawful master.

In no time at all he had a kettle of water on the stove, in which the coals of a good fire still lingered, and with a clean cloth he washed my wound so gently that I scarcely could believe his great, coa.r.s.e hands were actually at work on me. "Dah you is," he murmured, bending over the red, shallow gash that the bullet had cut, "dah you is. Don' you fret. Ah's gwine git you all tied up clean an' han'some, ya.s.s, sah."

The yells and cries of every description alarmed and agitated us both. It was far from rea.s.suring to know that that mob of natives was ranging the s.h.i.+p at will.

"Ef you was to ask me," Frank muttered, rolling his eyes till the whites gleamed starkly, "Ah's gwine tell you dis yeh s.h.i.+p is sottin', so to speak, on a bar'l of gunpowder. Ya.s.s, sah!"

An islander uttered a shrill catcall just outside the galley and thrust his head and half his naked body in the door. He vanished again almost instantly, but Frank jumped and upset the kettle. "Ya.s.s, sah, you creepy ol' sarpint," he gasped. "Ya.s.s, sah, we's sottin' on a bar'l of gunpowder."

I am convinced, as I look back on that night from the pinnacle of more than half a century, that not one man in ten thousand has ever spent one like it. Allied with a horde whose language we could not speak, we had boarded our own s.h.i.+p and now--mutineers, pirates, or loyal mariners, according to your point of view--we shared her possession with a mob of howling heathens whose goodwill depended on the whim of the moment, and who might at any minute, by slaughtering us out of hand, get for their own G.o.dless purposes the s.h.i.+p and all that was in her.

The cook cautiously fingered the keen edge of his cleaver as we looked out and saw that dawn was brightening in the east.

"Dat Falk, he say he gwine git us yet," the cook muttered. "Maybe so--maybe not. Maybe we ain't gwine last as long as dat."

"All hands aft!"

Frank and I looked at each other. The galley was as safe and comfortable as any place aboard s.h.i.+p and we were reluctant to leave it.

"_All hands aft!_" came the call again.

"Ah reckon," Frank said thoughtfully, "me and you better be gwine. When Mistah Hamlin he holler like dat, he want us."

Light had come with amazing swiftness, and already we could see the deck from stem to stern without help of the torches, which still flamed and sent thin streamers of smoke drifting into the mist.

As we emerged from the galley, I noticed that the after-hatch was half open. That in itself did not surprise me; stranger things than that had come to pa.s.s in the last hour or two; but when some one cautiously emerged from the hold, with a quick, sly glance at those on the quarter-deck, I'll confess that I was surprised. It was the man from Boston.

Smiling broadly and turning his black rat-like eyes this way and that, the chief of our wild allies, who held a naked kris from which drops of blood were falling, stood beside Roger. Blodgett was at the wheel, nervously fingering the spokes; Neddie Benson stood behind him, obviously ill at ease, and Davie Paine, who had got from the cabin what few of his things were left there, to take them forward, was a little at one side. But the natives were swarming everywhere, aloft and alow, and we knew only too well that no small movable object would escape their thieving fingers.

"Ef on'y dem yeh heathen don't took to butcherin'!" the cook muttered.

The prophetic words were scarcely spoken when what we most feared came to pa.s.s. One of the islanders, by accident or design, b.u.mped into Blodgett,-- always erratic, never to be relied on in a crisis,--who, turning without a thought of the consequences, struck the man with his fist a blow that floored him, and flashed out his knife.

That single spark threatened an explosion that would annihilate us. Spears enclosed us from all sides; krises leaped at our throats.

"Come on, lads! Stand together," Blodgett shrieked.

With a yell of terror the cook sprang to join the others, and bellowing in panic, swung his cleaver wildly.

The man from Boston and Neddie Benson shrank back against the taffrail as a mult.i.tude of moving brown figures seemed to swarm about us. Then I saw Roger leap forward, his arms high in air, his hands extended.

"Get back!" he cried, glancing at us over his shoulders.

As all stopped and stared at him, he coolly turned to the chief and handed him his pistol, b.u.t.t foremost. Was Roger mad, I wondered? He was the sanest man of all our crew. The chief gravely took the proffered weapon and looked at Blodgett, whose face was contorted with fear, and at the Malay, who by now was sitting up on deck blinking about him in a dazed way. Then he smiled and raised his hand and the points of the weapons fell.

In truth I was nearly mad myself, for now it all struck me as funny and I laughed until I cried, and all the others looked at me, and soon the natives began to point and laugh themselves. I suppose I was hysterical, but it created a diversion and helped to save the day; and Neddie Benson and the man from Boston, whom Roger had sent below, returned soon with bolts of cloth and knives and pistols and threw them in a heap on the quarter-deck.

Some word that I suppose meant gifts, went from lip to lip and our allies eagerly crowded around us.

"Get behind me, men," Roger said in an undertone. "Whatever happens, guard the companionway. I think we're safe, but since by grace of Providence we're all here together, we'll take no chances that we can avoid."

The first rays of sunlight shone on the heap of bright stuffs and polished metal, but the sun itself was no brighter than the face of the chief when Roger draped over him a length of bright cloth and presented him with a handsome knife. He threw back his head, laughing aloud, and strutted across the deck. Turning in grave farewell, he grasped his booty with one arm and, after a few sharp words to his men, swung himself down by the chains with the other. To man after man we gave gaudy cloths or knives or, when all the knives were given away, a cutla.s.s or a gun; and when at last the only canoes in sight were speeding toward sh.o.r.e like comets with tails of red flannel and purple calico, we breathed deeply our relief.

"Now, men," said Roger, "we have a hard morning's work in front of us.

Cook, break out a cask of beef and a cask of bread, and get us something to eat. Davie, you stand watch and keep your eye out either for a native canoe or for any sign of Falk or his party. The rest of you--all except Lathrop-- wash down the deck and sew those bodies up in a piece of old sail with plenty of ballast. Ben, you and I have a little job in front of us. Come into the cabin with me."