The Mutineers Part 35

"I wish she were near enough for us to watch them handle the sails on the after masts," I said.

She had a pair of mizzen-masts, one on the larboard side, one on the starboard, and I was puzzled to know how they were used.

"She'll pa.s.s close aboard on this next tack," Mr. Cledd replied. "I think we'll be able to see." He had paused to watch her manoeuvres.

"Here's the doctor," Blodgett murmured.

Black Frank was coming aft with a quick humpy walk. "'Scuse me, sah, 'scuse me!" he said. "But I's skeered that we--"

Mr. Cledd now had gone to the companion. "Captain Hamlin," he called again, "there's a junk pa.s.sing close aboard."

I heard Roger's step on the companion-way. It later transpired that he had not heard the first summons.

"Mah golly! Look dah!" the cook exclaimed.

The junk was looming up dangerously.

Mr. Cledd caught my arm. "Run forward quick--quick--call up all hands," he cried. Then raising the trumpet, "Half a dozen of you men loose the cannon."

Leaping to the spar deck, I ran to do his bidding, for the junk now was bearing swiftly down upon us. On my way to the forecastle-hatch I noted the stacked pikes and loaded muskets by the mainmast, and picked out the most likely cover from which to fire on possible boarders. That my voice was shaking with excitement, I did not realize until I had sent my summons trembling down into the darkness.

I heard the men leaping from their bunks; I heard Roger giving sharp commands from the quarter-deck; I heard voices on the junk. By accident or by malice, she inevitably was going to collide with the Island Princess. As we came up into the wind with sails a-s.h.i.+ver, I scurried back to the stack of muskets.

Neddie Benson was puffing away just behind me. "I didn't ought to 'ave come," he moaned. "I had my warning. Oh, it serves me right--I might 'a'

married the lady."

"Bah, that's no way for a _man_ to talk," cried Davie Paine.

It all was so unreal that I felt as if I were looking at a picture. It did not seem as if it could be Ben Lathrop who was standing shoulder to shoulder with Neddie Benson and old Davie. There was running and calling on all sides and aloft. Blocks were creaking as the men hauled at braces and halyards; and when the s.h.i.+p rolled I saw that the men on the yard-arms were shaking the courses from the gaskets. Although our crew was really too small to work the s.h.i.+p and fight at the same time, it was evident that Roger intended so far as possible to do both.

But meanwhile the junk had worn s.h.i.+p and she still held her position to windward. Suddenly there came from her deck the flash of a musket and a loud report. Then another and another. Then Roger's voice sounded sharply above the sudden clamor and our own long gun replied.

Flame from its muzzle burst in the faces of the men at the bow of the junk, and the ball, mainly by chance, I suppose, hit her foremast and brought down mast and sail. Then the junk came about and b.u.mped into us abreast, with a terrific crash that stove in the larboard bulwark and showered us with fragments of carved and gilded wood broken from her towering bow.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

PIKES, CUTLa.s.sES, AND GUNS

As I hastily poured powder into the pan of my musket, a man sprang to our deck and dashed at Davie Paine, who thrust out a pike and impaled him as if he were a fowl on a spit, then reached for a musket. Another came and another; I saw them leap down singly. One of our new men whom we had signed at Canton raised his cutla.s.s and sliced down the third man to board us; then they came on in an overwhelming stream.

Seeing that it would be suicide to attempt to maintain our ground, and that we already were cut off from the party on the quarter-deck, we retreated forward, fighting off the enemy as we went, and ten or a dozen of us took our stand on the forecastle.

Kipping and Falk and the beach-combers they had gathered together had conducted their campaign well. Some half of us were forward, half aft, so that we could not fire on the boarders without danger of hitting our own men. Davie Paine clubbed his musket and felled a strange white man, and Neddie Benson went down with a bullet through his thigh; then the pirates surged forward and almost around us. Before we realized what was happening, we had been forced back away from Neddie and had retreated to the knightheads. We saw a beast of a yellow ruffian stab Neddie with a kris, then one of our own men saw a chance to dart back under the very feet of our enemies and lay hold of Neddie's collar and drag him groaning up to us.

They came at us hotly, and we fought them off with pikes and cutla.s.ses; but we were breathing hard now and our arms ached and our feet slipped. The circle of steel blades was steadily drawing closer.

That the end of our voyage had come, I was convinced, but I truly was not afraid to die. It was no credit to me; simply in the heat of action I found no time for fear. Parry and slas.h.!.+ Slash and parry! Blood was in my eyes. A cut burned across my right hand. My musket had fallen underfoot and I wielded a rusty blade that some one else had dropped. Fortunately the flesh wound I got from the musket-ball in our other battle had healed cleanly, and no lameness handicapped me.

We had no idea what was going on aft, and for my own part I supposed that Roger and the rest were in straits as sore as our own; but suddenly a tremendous report almost deafened us, and when our opponents turned to see what had happened we got an instant's breathing-s.p.a.ce.

"It's the stern-chasers," Davie gasped. "They've faced 'em round!"

The light of a torch flared up and I saw shadowy shapes darting this way and that.

There were two cannon; but only one shot had been fired.

Suddenly Davie seized me by the shoulder. "See! See there!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely in my ear.

I turned and followed his finger with my eyes. High on the stern of the junk, black against the starlit sky, I saw the unmistakable figure of Kipping. He was laughing--mildly. The outline of his body and the posture and motion of his head and shoulders all showed it. Then he leaped to the deck and we lost sight of him. Where he had mustered that horde of slant-eyed pirates, we never stopped to wonder. We had no time for idle questions.

I know that I, for one, finding time during the lull in the fighting to appraise our chances, expected to die there and then. A vastly greater force was attacking us, and we were divided as well as outnumbered. But if we were to die, we were determined to die fighting; so with our backs to the bulwark and with whatever weapons we had been able to s.n.a.t.c.h up in our hands, we defended ourselves as best we could and had no more respite to think of what was going on aft.

Only one stern gun, you remember, had been fired. Now the second spoke.

There was a yell of anguish as the ball cut through the midst of the pirates, a tremendous crash that followed almost instantly the report of the cannon, a sort of brooding hush, then a thunderous reverberation compared with which all other noises of the night had been as nothing.

Tongues of flame sprang skyward and a ghastly light shot far out on the sea. The junk heaved back, settled, turned slowly over and seemed to spread out into a great ma.s.s of wreckage. Pieces of timber and plank and spar came tumbling down and a few men scrambled to our decks. We could hear others crying out in the water, as they swam here and there or grasped at planks and beams to keep themselves afloat.

The cannon ball had penetrated the side of the junk and had exploded a great store of gunpowder.

Part of the wreckage of the junk was burning, and the flames threw a red glare over the strange scene aboard the s.h.i.+p, where the odds had been so suddenly altered. Our a.s.sailants, who but a moment before had had us at their mercy, now were confounded by the terrific blow they had received; instead of fighting the more bravely because no retreat was left them, they were confused and did not know which way to turn.

Davie Paine, sometimes so slow-witted, seemed now to grasp the situation with extraordinary quickness. "Come on, lads," he bellowed, "we've got 'em by the run."

Again clubbing his musket, he leaped into the gangway so ferociously that the pirates scrambled over the side, brown men and white, preferring to take their chances in the sea. As he charged on, I lost sight of him in the maelstrom of struggling figures. On my left a Lascar was fighting for his life against one of our new crew. On every side men were splas.h.i.+ng and shouting and cursing.

Now, high above the uproar, I heard a voice, at once familiar and strange.

For a moment I could not place it; it had a wild note that baffled me. Then I saw black Frank, cleaver in hand, come bounding out of the darkness. His arms and legs, like the legs of some huge tarantula, flew out at all angles as he ran, and in fierce gutturals he was yelling over and over again:--

"Whar's dat Kipping?"

He peered this way and that.

"Whar's dat Kipping?"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw some one stir by the deck-house, and the negro, seeing him at the same moment, leaped at my own conclusion.

In doubt whither to flee, too much of a coward at heart either to throw himself overboard or to face his enemy if there was any chance of escape, the unhappy Kipping hesitated one second too long. With a mighty lunge the negro caught him by the throat, and for a moment the two swayed back and forth in the open s.p.a.ce between us and our enemies.

I thought of the night when they had fought together in the galley door.

Momentarily Kipping seemed actually to hold his own against the mad negro; but his strength was of despair and almost at once we saw that it was failing.

"Stop!" Kipping cried. "I'll yield! Stop--stop! Don't kill me!"