Crown and Anchor Part 26

I noticed even a mandoline, with a blue riband attached to it cruising round the bottles; which seemed quite out of its lat.i.tude there! But, this was not all.

There was a strange, sickly smell in the room; and what was that looking up at me from the rubbish-strewn deck close to where I stood by the cabin door?

I almost shrieked out as it caught my wandering glance, the eyes seeming to look right into mine, opened wide in one fixed stare.

It was the face of a dead woman, over whose marble-like features the water rippled as the s.h.i.+p lurched, tossing her long hair about as if playing with it and giving her the appearance of being alive.

"Poor thing!" I whispered to Mr Jellaby, who was near me and also gazing down at her, the presence of the dead making me drop my voice.

"She was drowned, I suppose?"

"Murdered!" he replied laconically, drawing my attention to a terrible cut across her neck, which I had not observed before, almost severing the head from the body. "Look there--and there, Vernon!"

I followed the motions of his directing hand, and saw, first, a poor little dead baby floating about in the corner of the cabin; and then, behind the door by which we had entered, the corpse of a big, handsome man propped up against one of the lockers, in a kneeling position.

The man was only half-dressed, being in his s.h.i.+rt and trousers, as if caught unawares, holding a c.o.c.ked revolver yet in his rigid fingers, stretched out in steady aim; while, at the further end of the cabin, where there was another doorway, communicating apparently with the main saloon, lay four ruffianly-looking fellows, all with long Spanish knives in their hands tightly clutched as if to strike.

These scoundrels had evidently killed the lady and little baby, and had then been shot by the poor chap on his knees, before he had himself fallen a victim to the cowardly stab from behind of a fifth scoundrel.

The latter he had got down, however, before he died; for, he was kneeling on his chest, as the second lieutenant pointed out to me prior to our leaving this chamber of horrors, though the villain's dagger was still sticking in the brave fellow's back.

I could see this now for myself as a gleam of suns.h.i.+ne came down through the shattered skylight, showing up all the hideous details of the place, with the sides of the cabin and the bulkhead dividing it from the pa.s.sage, as well as the deck beams overhead, all spattered with blood; albeit, the water sluicing about below had removed all traces of the sad tragedy from thence long since.

"Let us go now," said Mr Jellaby, as soon as I had taken in all these sickening surroundings, leading the way out of the accursed place. "We have stopped here long enough!"

"We have indeed, sir," I replied, following him up the companion, with Bill Bates bringing up the rear in silence. "But, what do you think has happened, sir?"

"It's a case of mutiny first, most probably; and then, murder," said the second lieutenant, gravely, stepping over the coaming of the hatchway on to the deck of the p.o.o.p as he emerged from the companion way.

"We'll never know the rights of it, however, unless the doctor manages to bring round that poor chap we released from the rigging, who must have been tied up by the mutineers and thus escaped them somehow or other! I couldn't find a log-book or anything else in the cabin which would give us a sc.r.a.p of information about the vessel or those belonging to her; and, all the rest of the wreck is under water--indeed, I don't think she's far off sinking."

"Beg pardon, sir," observed the c.o.xswain, interrupting him. "The s.h.i.+p's just sent up our recall, and she's bearing away now to pick us up to leeward when we cast off from here, sir."

"Yes, my man, I see, and I notice, also, she has sent down her topgallants and taken in another reef," returned Mr Jellaby, proceeding to work his way back amids.h.i.+ps to those we had left there, wading through the water and wreckage and tophamper strewing the waist. "The old doctor, too, looks in a precious wax and is carrying on at a grand rate about our keeping him waiting, I bet. He's jawing away now to that knowing hand of a marine of his; so the sooner we see about getting him aboard our old barquey again the better!"

He could not have come to a wiser conclusion, for the wind had increased in force rapidly, even during the short interval since I had left the deck, now blowing more than half a gale; while the sea was beginning to run high, breaking over the bows of the half-submerged hulk, sending up columns of spray that wetted us where we were and almost drenching Doctor Nettleby and the corporal, who were attending to the poor Spaniard amids.h.i.+ps, just under the lee of the mainmast.

"You're a nice fellow!" cried the doctor to Mr Jellaby on our approaching near enough to hear what he said. "It won't be your fault if we're not all drowned here like rats in a hole and never reach the s.h.i.+p. As for the cutter, I believe she's swamped already!"

He was in a fine rage, certainly; but, the lieutenant, whose good temper was proof against any amount of irritability, soon calmed him down.

"I beg your pardon, doctor," he said, as he hailed the bowman of the cutter, which was not swamped as yet, although making very bad weather of it, telling him to haul up alongside under the lee of the wreck. "I really beg your pardon, doctor, but I could not be any quicker; for the captain ordered me to examine the vessel and see if I could find her papers."

He thereupon described to Doctor Nettleby what the three of us had seen in the cabin; when that gentleman was as much shocked as we were.

"Can I do anything, Jellaby?" he asked. "Are you sure they were all lifeless?"

"As dead as herrings, doctor."

"Then there would be no use in my going down to see the poor creatures?"

"My dear sir, you couldn't do them an ounce of good, for they're long past the reach of all human aid!" replied the lieutenant, while he gave a helping hand to Corporal Macan to lift up the still unconscious Spaniard whom we had rescued, the sole survivor, so far as we knew, of all those who had perhaps started gaily enough on their disastrous voyage in the now dismantled and water-logged barque. "Besides, my dear doctor, we haven't got the time. If we don't clear out of this pretty sharp, we'll all go below, I'm afraid! Steady there, Bates, with that grapnel rope! You'll have the boat coming broadside on against the wreck, if you don't take care and she'll be stove in. Be smart now and rig-out that clewline there to the brace-block at the end of the yardarm. It will serve to lower down this poor beggar into the boat, which you must all fend off. Let her just come under the spar handsomely, without touching the side."

These directions being carefully adhered to, we contrived, by using great caution, though not without considerable risk, to lower down the almost lifeless man into the cutter; after which we descended ourselves, Mr Jellaby being the last to leave the hapless hulk, letting go the grapnel as he dropped into the sternsheets.

The doctor and I caught him as he joined us, everyone else having enough to do to keep the boat steady with the oars; while Bates, of course, was busy with the tiller, which he kept amids.h.i.+ps.

As the boat drifted past the low rail of the vessel, now almost level with the water, which partly sheltered us from the full force of the wind and waves, I had the opportunity, when we glided under the stern, to read her name emblazoned thereon in large gilt letters.

It was _La Bella Catarina_.

"Give way, men!" cried the lieutenant, on our getting out into the open sea the next moment beyond the hull of the derelict, the c.o.xswain heading the cutter directly for our s.h.i.+p, which had run down to leeward of the wreck so that we could fetch her more easily. "Pull all you can, my lads. Our lives depend on it!"

We were about half-way towards the _Candahar_, which had gone about on the port tack, beating to windward and coming up to meet us, the crew of the boat bending their backs and pulling their hardest till the stout ash blades nearly doubled in two with the strain, while the big, rolling sea raced after us, trying to catch us up; when, all of a sudden, the man holding the stroke oar on the after thwart uttered an exclamation which made the lieutenant look behind.

"By Jove!" he cried, "we've had a narrow shave."

The doctor and I both turned round at this.

We were only just in time to see the ill-fated vessel which we had so recently left, rear herself end on and sink beneath the waves, bow foremost!

CHAPTER TWENTY.

"A BIT OF A BLOW!"

The doctor did not like the flippant way in which the lieutenant alluded to our providential escape.

"You ought to thank G.o.d, Mr Jellaby, with all your heart that you have not gone down in her," he said in a grave and impressive tone, looking him full in the face. "It is far too serious a matter for you to speak of so lightly. Just think, man, we've only been saved by a hair's-breadth from death!"

The lieutenant, however, was incorrigible.

"A miss is as good as a mile, doctor," he rejoined with a laugh, which made all the boat's crew grin in sympathy, his devil-may-care philosophy appealing more strongly to their sailor nature than the doctor's moral reflections. "Stand by, bows!"

On this, the bowmen uns.h.i.+pped their oars with great care, so as not to cause any rocking; and, laying them in dexterously, faced round at the same time, one holding a boathook ready and the other the grapnel with a coil of rope attached, prepared to fling it when we were near enough to the s.h.i.+p.

Our gallant vessel was plunging along athwart our course as if she meant to give us the go-by, the sea foaming up at her bows in a big wave that curled up in front of her forefoot and broke over her figurehead as she dipped, sending the surf high in the air in a sheet of foam over her forecastle.

Those on board, though, had no intention of abandoning us, as we could quickly see, had we needed any a.s.surance on the point.

Just as she was within half a cable's length of our starboard beam, we could hear the sound of the shrill boatswain's pipe above the splash of the sea; when she came up to the wind so close to the cutter that it looked as if she was going to run us down instanter.

But, we knew better than that.

"Way enough!" shouted Mr Jellaby; and, by an adroit turn of the tiller, the boat's nose shoved in under her lee to port into the slack water made by her hull. "Be ready with that grapnel there forrud!"

There was no necessity, however, for using this, for Commander Nesbitt had stationed a man in the chains to watch for us; and, immediately we rounded-in under the counter the seaman payed out a long gra.s.s rope attached to a buoy, which, as it floated past the bowman was easily able to pick up with his boathook and make fast beneath the thwarts of the cutter forwards.