The Ghost Ship/Chapter Twenty One.
Chapter Twenty One.
“Dios!” exclaimed Colonel Vereker. “Are you—certain of this, sir?”
Captain Applegarth shrugged his shoulders.
“Ask Mr Stokes here and your doctor there, Mr O’Neil, whether they did not hear Haldane’s yarn about your ship five days ago, sir, before we ever clapped eyes on you,” said he in a slightly aggrieved tone, as if he thought his word was being doubted. “Why, colonel, this poor lad was becoming the butt for everybody’s chaff on board on account of it!”
“Gracious!” cried the other. “This is indeed really wonderful!”
“Aye, colonel, and more than that! But for the lad seeing this mirage, or whatever else it was, and telling me about it, we would not have gone off our course in search of you to render what assistance we could—yours being the ‘ship in distress’ Haldane reported having sighted to the southward. This divergence from our track, sir, took us into the very teeth of the gale which we encountered later on, that same evening, and conduced to our breaking down.”
“Faith,” put in Garry O’Neil, “that’s thrue for sure, sor!”
“This breakdown of ours, colonel, led to our drifting to the southward into the trail of the Gulf Stream,” continued the skipper, following up the strange sequence of events as they occurred, one by one. “Your ship—the real ship, I mean—was drifting north and east meanwhile, carried along by the same current, and then it came about that, although apparently going in opposite directions and acted on by different causes, our tracks crossed each other on the chart last night—at least, that is my opinion.”
“I see, I see,” cried Colonel Vereker quickly, interrupting him, and in a state of great excitement. “Thank God! But for that you would never have sighted our drifting boat and picked up myself and poor Captain Alphonse! Thank God, Señor Haldane saw us in that mysterious way. It seems to have been an interposition of heaven to warn you of our peril and bring you to our aid!”
“Just so, colonel; that’s what I think myself now,” said the skipper impressively, taking off his cap and looking upward with a grave reflective air. “Aye, and I thank God, too, for putting us in the way of helping you, with all my heart, sir!”
“Ah!” observed old Mr Stokes, who had remained silent the while. “The ways of Providence are as wonderful as they are mysterious!”
There was a pause after this in our conversation which no one seemed anxious to break till Garry O’Neil spoke.
“Faith, sor, you haven’t tould us yit how ye come by this wound in your leg, an’ about that poor chap in yander,” he said to the colonel, nodding his head in the direction of Captain Applegarth’s inner state cabin, where the French captain was lying in his cot. “Sure, we’re dyin’ to hear the end of your scrimmage with those black divvles!”
Colonel Vereker heaved a sigh.
“Well, I ought not to doubt that the good God is watching over my little, darling daughter after what I have just learnt, my friends,” said he in a more hopeful tone than his depressed manner indicated, looking round at us with his large, melancholy, dark eyes. “I ought not to despair!”
“Certainly not, sir; I dare say we’ll soon overhaul the ship now, for we’re more than an hour and a half in chase of her at full speed,” remarked the skipper, recovering himself from his fit of abstraction and looking at his watch to see the time. “Go on, colonel; go on, please, and tell us the end of your story.”
“There is little more for you to hear, sir,” replied the other, settling himself back in his seat again, after Mr O’Neil had once more dressed the wound in his leg. “Before it was dark that terrible night I sent Elsie below, while Captain Alphonse with myself stayed up on the poop for the first watch, each of us with a loaded revolver, besides having a box of cartridges handy on the skylight near by, should we want to replenish our ammunition. But the Haytians, sir, had evidently had enough of us for that evening, making no further attempts to attack us as the hours wore on.
“They were as watchful as ourselves, though, for as Cato, anon, trying to creep forwards so as to release the French sailors confined under the main hatchway, had a narrow escape of his life, a heavy spar being suddenly let down by the run almost on top of his head when he ventured out on the exposed deck. This was at midnight, when the second mate, Basseterre, and Don Miguel, with the French sailor Duval, relieved Captain Alphonse and me, taking the middle watch.
“Next morning, however, soon after Captain Alphonse and I, with the little Englishman, had resumed charge of the poop and the others were resting—alas, my friends, without my knowledge or sanction, poor Cato made another attempt to reach the hatchway, which, unfortunately resulted in his death!
“Hearing Ivan growl and my little daughter cry out as if something had frightened her, I had gone down to the cabin shortly after daylight to see what was the matter, cautioning Captain Alphonse, who hardly needed my caution, not to leave his post for a moment, and not thinking of Cato, who had disappeared from the top of the companion-way and had gone below to Elsie—heard her cry, I thought, and gone to her even before myself.
“He was not in the cabin, however; nor did I find anything much the matter with my child, who had evidently unconsciously cried out in some dream she had, Ivan, of course, gushing in sympathy and waking her up. So, telling Elsie to compose herself and go off to sleep again, as everything was going on all right and there was nothing to be alarmed about, beyond the snoring of Monsieur and Madame Boisson at the further end of the cabin, I, feeling greatly relieved, returned on deck.
“I looked round for Cato at once, naturally, for our forces were not so strong that one would not be missed, especially such a one as he!
“But my faithful negro was nowhere in sight! Captain Alphonse said, too, he had not seen him during my absence below, nor indeed, for some time prior to my going down to the cabin.
“I then searched the wheel-house aft without discovering him.
“‘Cato!’ I called out, ‘where are you? Come here immediately!’
“My poor servant did not answer, but that black fiend, the pseudo ‘marquis’ advanced from the forepart of the deck, sheltering himself, you may be sure, from my aim in the rear of the windlass bitts, which were in a line between us.
“‘You will have to call louder,’ he cried with a mocking laugh like that of a hyena, and full of devilish glee. ‘I assure you, much louder, my friend, before that spy slave of yours will ever be able to answer you again!’
“Heavens! I feared the worst then. Poor Cato! They had caught him reconnoitring.
“‘What have you done with him, you son of Satan?’ I yelled out, full of rage and anger, and with a terrible foreboding. ‘If you have hurt a hair of his head I will make you pay dearly for it, I can tell you, you fiend!’
“The malicious, murdering wretch only replied to my threat with another mocking laugh, which his companions echoed, as if enjoying a joke, while I noticed them dragging at a shapeless mass from the forecastle forwards.
“‘Kick the carrion aft!’ I heard the inhuman brute say to his followers. ‘Let the “white trash” see the dog’s carcass! He will then believe what I have said, Name of God! and know what is in store for himself!’
“My God! Señor Applegarth and you, gentlemen, I can hardly tell you what followed. It is all too horrible.
“The sight of what I saw will haunt me to my grave!
“For the shapeless mass I had observed slowly raised itself up from the deck, and I saw that it was my poor Cato. The savages had hacked the unfortunate man to pieces with their knives!
“He recognised me, poor creature, and appeared to try to speak, but only made an inarticulate noise between a sob and a groan that rings in my ears now, while the blood gushed from his mouth as he fell forwards, facing me, dead, huddled up in a heap again upon the deck!
“Those devils incarnate, besides mutilating his limbs, had, would you believe it, cut out his tongue as they had before threatened, for warning us of their treachery!”
“God in heaven!” exclaimed Captain Applegarth, stopping in his quick walk up and down the saloon and bringing his fist down on the table with a bang that made the glasses in the swinging tray above jump and rattle, two of them indeed falling over and smashing into fragments on the floor. “The infernal demons! Can such things be? It is dreadful!”
All of us were equally horror stricken and indignant at the colonel’s terrible recital, even old Mr Stokes waking up and stretching out his hand to the skipper as if pledging himself to what he wished to urge before he spoke.
“Horrible, horrible, sir!” he panted out, his anger taking away his breath and affecting his voice. “But we’ll avenge the poor fellow and kill the rascals when we come up with them, won’t we, sir? There’s my hand on it, anyway!”
I did not and could not say anything; no, I couldn’t; but you can pretty well imagine the oath I mentally registered.
Not so Garry O’Neil, though.
The Irishman’s face flamed with rage and anger. “Kill them, sor!” cried he, springing to his feet from the chair in which he had been seated alongside the colonel, whose injured limb he had been carefully attending to again all the while, his reddish beard and moustache bristling, and his steel-blue eyes flashing out veritable sparks, it seemed of fire. “Faith, killin’s too good for ’em, sure, the haythen miscreants! I’d boil ’em alive, sor, or roast ’em in the stoke-hold, begorrah, if I had me own way with ’em. I would, sor, so hilp me Moses, if all the howly saints, whose names be praised, an’ the blessed ould Pope, too, prayed me to spare ’em. Och, the murtherin’ bastes, the daymans, the divvles!”
He was almost beside himself in his rage and passionate invective. So much so, indeed, that Mr Stokes, despite his own hearty sympathy with the like cause, looked at the infuriated Irishman in great trepidation, for his face was flushed, and his hair seemed actually to stand on end, while his words tumbled out of his mouth pell-mell, jostling each other in their eagerness to find utterance.
The chief really fancied, I believe, that he had suddenly gone mad, as he literally fumed with fury.
After a few moments, however, Garry cooled down a bit, restraining himself by a violent effort, and he turned to his whilom patient with an apologetic air.
“Faith, sor, I fancied I had that divvle, your fri’nd, the markiss, sure, be the throat,” said he, with a feeble attempt at a grin and biting his lips to keep in his feelings while he dropped his arms, which he had been whirling round his head like a maniac only just before. “By the powers, wouldn’t I throttle the baste swately, if I had hould of him once in these two hands of mine!”
Colonel Vereker stretched out both his impulsively, and gripped those of Garry O’Neil.
“Heavens!” he cried, with tears in his eyes. “You are a white man, sir. I can’t say more than that, and I am proud to know you!”
“Och, niver moind that, colonel,” said the Irishman, putting aside the compliment, the highest the colonel thought he could give. “Till us what you did, sure, afther the poor maimed crayture was murthered by that Haytian divvle. Faith, I loathe the baste. I hate him like pizen, though I haven’t sane him yit, more’s the pity; but it’ll be a bad job for him when I do clap my peepers on him!”
“I could not do much,” said the other, proceeding with his account of the struggle with the mutineers on board the Saint Pierre, “but Captain Alphonse and myself emptied our revolvers at the scoundrels and floored three of them before they retreated back into the forecastle; but the ‘marquis,’ the greatest scoundrel of the whole lot, escaped scot free, though I fired four shots at him point blank as he dodged behind the mainmast and windlass bits, keeping well under cover, and mocking my efforts to get a straight aim. The villain, I think, bears a charmed life!”
“Niver you fear, sor,” put in Garry, in answer to this remark. “His father, ould Nick, is keepin’ him for somethin’ warm whin I git hould of him. Faith, sor, you can bet your boots on that, sure!”
Colonel Vereker smiled sadly at the impulsive Irishman’s remark. He could see that he had moved every fibre of his feeling heart and warm nature and that he was following every incident of his terrible story of atrocities and sufferings with an all-engrossing interest.
“I rushed to the poop-ladder to make for the mocking brute, intending to grip him by the neck, as you have suggested, sir,” said he, “when, by heavens, I would have choked the life out of his vile carcass!
“But Captain Alphonse prevented me.
“‘My God! dear friend,’ he cried, catching hold of me round the body in his powerful arms, so that I could not move a step. ‘Remember the little one, your little daughter, who would have no one to protect her should these rabble kill you. Besides, my friend, the good Cato is dead now, and the useless sacrifice of your life, of both our lives probably, if you go forwards, and perhaps too the life of the little one, who cannot even help herself, will never bring back the breath to the brave lad’s body! No, no, colonel, I promise you,’ said he, at the same time kissing the tips of his fingers and elevating his shoulders, in his French fashion, ‘We will do something better than that. Only wait; be patient. We will avenge him, you will see, but I pray you do nothing rash, for the sake of the little one.’”