THE MUTINY ON THE FLAG
A cabin was reserved for Fritz and his wife in the _Unicorn_, and an
adjoining one for Frank, and they took their meals at Captain
Littlestone’s table.
Nothing of special note happened during the voyage. There were all the
usual incidents, changeable seas, uncertain winds, calms, and a few
violent outbreaks of heavy weather through which the corvette came
without much damage. In the South Atlantic they passed a few vessels
which would report tidings of the _Unicorn_ in Europe. In the present
interval of peace after the long period of great wars, the high seas
were safe.
But the _Unicorn_, which had had a fairly easy time while crossing the
Atlantic, met with shocking weather when south of Africa. A violent
storm burst on her during the night of the 19th of August, and the gale
drove her out to sea again. The hurricane grew more and more violent,
and they had to run before it, as it was impossible to lie to. Captain
Littlestone, splendidly supported by his officers and crew, displayed
great skill. The mizzen-mast had to be cut away, and a leak was sprung
aft which was only smothered with difficulty. At last, when the wind
fell, Captain Littlestone was able to resume his course and hurried to
the harbour at Cape Town for repairs.
On the morning of the 10th of September the top of the Table, the
mountain which gives its name to the bay, was sighted.
Directly the _Unicorn_ had found her moorings, James Wolston, with his
wife and Dolly, came out in a boat.
What a welcome they gave Fritz and Jenny and Frank, and how happy they
all were!
For the last ten months they had perforce been without news. Although
there was no particular ground for imagining that anything untoward had
befallen the people at Rock Castle, this absence could not but seem very
long.
James Wolston’s affairs had all been wound up satisfactorily.
But they found themselves confronted by the impossibility of putting to
sea at once. The damage done to the _Unicorn_ was serious enough to
necessitate a prolonged stay in Cape Town harbour. It would take two or
three months to make repairs, after her cargo had been taken out of the
corvette. She could not possibly sail for New Switzerland before the end
of October.
But the passengers on the _Unicorn_ had an unexpected opportunity of
shortening their stay at the Cape.
There happened to be in the harbour a vessel, due to sail in a
fortnight. She was the _Flag_, an English three-masted vessel of five
hundred tons, captain Harry Gould, bound for Batavia, in the Sunda
Islands. To put in at New Switzerland would take her very little out of
her course, and the passengers for the island were prepared to pay a
good price for their passage.
Their proposal was accepted by Captain Gould, and the _Unicorn’s_
passengers transferred their baggage to the _Flag_.
The three-master’s preparations were finished in the afternoon of the
20th of September. That evening they said good-bye, not without regret,
to Captain Littlestone, promising to look out for the arrival of the
_Unicorn_ at the mouth of Deliverance Bay towards the end of November.
Next morning the _Flag_ sailed, with a favouring wind from the
south-west, and before the evening of that first day the high summits of
the Cape, left forty miles behind, disappeared below the horizon.
Harry Gould was a fine sailor, with cool courage equal to his
resolution. He was now in the prime of life, at forty-two, and had shown
his quality both as mate and captain. His owners had every confidence in
him.
To this confidence, Robert Borupt, the second officer on the _Flag_, was
not entitled. He was a man of the same age as Harry Gould, jealous,
vindictive, and of uncontrolled passions. He never believed that he
received the due meed of his merits. Disappointed in his hope of being
given the command of the _Flag_, he nursed at the bottom of his heart a
secret hatred of his captain. But his temper had not escaped the
vigilance of the boatswain, John Block, a fearless, reliable man devoted
heart and soul to his chief.
The crew of the _Flag_, mustering some score of men, was not of the
first-class, as Captain Gould very well knew. The boatswain noticed with
disapproval the indulgence too often shown by Robert Borupt to some of
the sailors, when fault should have been found with them for neglect of
duty. He thought that all this was suspicious, and he watched the second
officer, fully determined to give Captain Gould warning, if needful.
Nothing of note happened between the 22nd of August and the 9th of
September. The condition of the sea and the direction of the wind were
alike favourable to the ship’s progress, though the breeze was a shade
too light. If the three-master were able to maintain the same rate of
progress she would reach New Switzerland waters about the middle of
October, within the time anticipated.
But about this time the crew began to manifest symptoms of
insubordination. It even looked as though the second and third officers,
in defiance of every sense of duty, connived at this relaxing of
discipline. Robert Borupt, influenced by his own jealous and perverse
nature, took no steps to check the disorder.
But the _Flag_ continued to make her way north-east. On the 9th of
September she was almost in the middle of the Indian Ocean, on the line
of the Tropic of Capricorn, her position being 20° 17' latitude and 80°
45' longitude.
During the course of the previous night symptoms of bad weather had
appeared—a sudden fall of the barometer and a gathering of storm clouds,
both signs of the formidable hurricanes that too often lash these seas
to fury.
About three o’clock in the afternoon a squall got up so suddenly that it
almost caught the ship—a serious matter for a vessel which, heeled over
to one side, cannot answer to her rudder and is in danger of not being
brought up again unless her rigging is cut away. If that is done, she is
disabled, incapable of offering any resistance to the waves while lying
to, and is at the mercy of the ocean’s fury.
As soon as this storm broke the passengers had, of course, been obliged
to keep their cabins, for the deck was swept by tremendous seas. Only
Fritz and Frank stayed on deck to lend a hand with the crew.
Captain Gould took the watch at the outset, and the boatswain was at the
wheel, while the second and third officers were on duty in the
forecastle. The crew were at their posts, ready to obey the captain’s
orders, for it was a matter of life and death. The slightest mistake in
the handling of her, while the seas were breaking over the _Flag_ as she
lay half over on the port side, might have meant the end. Every effort
must be made to get her up again, and then to trim her sails so as to
bring her head on to the squall.
And yet the mistake was made, not deliberately perhaps, for the ship ran
the risk of foundering through it, but certainly through some
misunderstanding of the captain’s orders, of which an officer ought not
to have been capable, if he possessed any of the instincts of a sailor.
Robert Borupt, the second officer, alone was to blame. The foretopsail,
trimmed at a wrong moment, drove the ship still farther over, and a
tremendous lump of water crashed over the taffrail.
“That cursed Borupt wants to sink us!” cried Captain Gould.
“He has done it!” the boatswain answered, trying to shove the tiller to
starboard.
The captain leaped to the deck and made his way forward at the risk of
being swept back by the water. After a desperate struggle he reached the
forecastle.
“Get to your cabin!” he shouted in a voice of wrath to the second
officer; “get to your cabin, and stop there!”
Borupt’s blunder was so patent that not one of the crew dared to
protest, although they were all ready to stand by him if he had given
them the word. He obeyed, however, and went back to the poop.
What was possible to do, Captain Gould did. He trimmed all the canvas
that the _Flag_ could carry, and succeeded in bringing her up without
being obliged to cut away the rigging. The ship no longer lay broadside
on to the sea.
For three consecutive days they had run before the storm in constant
peril. During almost the whole of that time Susan and Jenny and Dolly
were obliged to keep to their cabins, while Fritz, Frank, and James
Wolston helped in the various operations.
At last, on the 13th of September, an abatement of the storm came. The
wind dropped, and although the sea did not immediately drop too, at last
the waves no longer swept the deck of the _Flag_.
The ladies hurried eagerly out of their cabins. They knew what had taken
place between the captain and the second officer, and why the latter had
been removed from his post. Robert Borupt’s fate would be decided by a
naval court when they got back.
[Illustration: For three days they had run before the storm.]
There was much damage to the canvas to be made good, and John Block, who
was in charge of this work, saw quite clearly that the crew were on the
verge of mutiny.
This state of things could not be lost upon Fritz, or Frank, or James
Wolston, and it filled them with more uneasiness than the storm had
caused them. Captain Gould would not shrink from the severest measures
against the mutineers. But was he not too late?
During the following week there was no actual breach of discipline. As
the _Flag_ had been carried some hundreds of miles to the east, she had
to turn back to the west, in order to get into the longitude of New
Switzerland.
On the 20th of September, about ten o’clock, much to the surprise of
all, for he had not been released from arrest, Robert Borupt reappeared
on the deck.
The passengers, who were all sitting together on the poop, had a
presentiment that the situation, grave enough already, was about to
become still more grave.
Directly Captain Gould saw the second officer coming forward he went up
to him.
“Mr. Borupt,” he said, “you are under arrest. What are you doing here?
Answer!”
“I will!” cried Borupt loudly. “And this is my answer!”
Turning to the crew, he shouted:
“Come on, mates!”
“Hurrah for Borupt!” sang from every part of the ship!
Captain Gould rushed down into his cabin and came back with a pistol in
his hand. But he was not given time to use it. A shot, fired by one of
the sailors round Borupt, wounded him in the head, and he fell into the
boatswain’s arms.
Resistance was hopeless against an entire crew of mutineers, headed by
the first and second officers. John Block, Fritz, Frank, and James
Wolston, drawn up near Captain Gould tried in vain to maintain the
struggle. In a moment they were overwhelmed by numbers, and ten sailors
hustled them down to the spar-deck with the captain.
Jenny, Dolly, Susan, and the child were shut into their cabins, over
which a guard was placed by order of Borupt, now ruler of the ship.
The situation of the prisoners in the semidarkness of the spar-deck, and
of the wounded captain whose head could only be dressed with cold
compresses, was a hard one. The boatswain was unfailing in his devotion
to the captain.
Fritz and Frank and James Wolston were consumed by appalling anxiety.
The three women were at the mercy of the mutineers of the _Flag_! The
men suffered agony from the thought that they were powerless.
Several days passed. Twice a day, morning and evening, the hatch of the
spar-deck was opened and the prisoners were given some food. To the
questions that John Block asked them, the sailors only replied with
brutal threats.
More than once did the boatswain and his companions try to force up the
hatch and regain their liberty. But the hatch was guarded day and night,
and even if they had succeeded in raising it, overpowering their guards,
and getting up on deck, what chance would they have had against the
crew, and what would have been the result?
“The brute! The brute!” said Fritz over and over again, as he thought of
his wife and Susan and Dolly.
“Yes; the biggest rascal alive!” John Block declared. “If he doesn’t
swing some day it will be because justice is dead!”
But if the mutineers were to be punished, and their ringleader given the
treatment he deserved, a man-of-war must catch and seize the _Flag_. And
Robert Borupt did not commit the blunder of going into waters where
ships were numerous, and where he and his gang might have run the risk
of being chased. He must have taken the ship far out of her proper
course, most probably to the eastward, with the object of getting away
alike from ships and the African and Australian shores.
Every day was adding a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, miles to the
distance separating the _Flag_ from the meridian of New Switzerland.
Captain Gould and the boatswain could tell from the angle at which the
ship heeled to port that she was making good speed. The creaking of the
mast steps showed that the first officer was cramming on sail. When the
_Flag_ arrived in those distant waters of the Pacific Ocean where piracy
was practicable, what would become of the prisoners? The mutineers would
not be able to keep them; would they maroon them on some desert island?
But anything would be better than to remain on board the ship, in the
hands of Robert Borupt and his accomplices.
A week had passed since Harry Gould and his friends had been shut up on
the spar-deck, without a word about the women. But on the 27th of
September, it seemed as if the speed of the three-master had decreased,
either because she was becalmed or because she was hove to.
About eight o’clock in the evening a squad of sailors came down to the
captives.
These had no choice but to obey the order to follow him which the second
officer gave them.
What was going on above? Was their liberty about to be restored to them?
Or had a party been formed against Robert Borupt to restore Captain
Gould to the command of the _Flag_?
When they were brought up on to the deck in front of all the crew, they
saw Borupt waiting for them at the foot of the mainmast. Fritz and Frank
cast a vain glance within the poop, the door of which was open. No lamp
or lantern shed a gleam of light within.
But as they came up to the starboard nettings, the boatswain could see
the top of a mast rocking against the side of the ship.
Evidently the ship’s boat had been lowered to the sea.
Was Borupt preparing, then, to put the captain and his friends aboard
her and cast them adrift in these waters, abandoning them to all the
perils of the sea, without the least idea whether they were near any
land?
And the unfortunate women, too, were they to remain on board, exposed to
such appalling danger?
At the thought that they would never see them more, Fritz and Frank and
James determined to make a last attempt to set them free, though it
should end in dying where they stood.
Fritz rushed to the side of the poop, calling Jenny. But he was stopped,
as Frank was stopped, and James was stopped before he heard any answer
from Susan to his call. They were overpowered at once, and despite
resistance were lowered with Captain Gould and John Block over the
nettings into the ship’s boat, which was fastened alongside the vessel
by a knotted cable.
Their surprise and joy—yes, joy!—were inexpressible. The dear ones whom
they had called in vain were in the boat already! The women had been
lowered down a few minutes before the prisoners had left the spar-deck.
They were waiting in mortal terror, not knowing whether their companions
were to be cast adrift with them.
It seemed to them that to be reunited was the greatest grace that Heaven
could have bestowed on them.
And yet what peril menaced them aboard this boat! Only four bags of
biscuit and salt meat had been flung into it, with three casks of fresh
water, a few cooking utensils, and a bundle of clothes and blankets
taken at random from the cabins—a meagre supply at best.
But they were together! Death alone could separate them henceforward.
They were not given much time to reflect. In a few moments, with the
freshening wind, the _Flag_ would be several miles away.
The boatswain had taken his place at the tiller, and Fritz and Frank
theirs at the foot of the mast, ready to hoist the sail directly the
boat should be free from the shelter of the ship.
Captain Gould had been laid down under the forward deck. Jenny was
ministering to him where he lay stretched out on the blankets, for he
was unable to stand.
On the _Flag_ the sailors were leaning over the nettings, looking on in
silence. Not one of them felt a spark of pity for their victims. Their
fierce eyes gleamed in the darkness.
Just at this moment a voice was raised—the voice of Captain Gould, to
whom his indignation restored some strength. He struggled to his feet,
dragged himself from bench to bench, and half stood up.
“You brutes!” he cried. “You shall not escape man’s justice!”
“Nor yet God’s justice!” Frank added.
“Cast off!” cried Borupt.
The rope dropped into the water, the boat was left alone, and the ship
disappeared into the darkness of the night.