By this time, the news having rapidly spread amongst the little
community that the longboat was in sight, every one--save of course poor
Captain Dinks, who could not yet move--had come out of the house.
The castaways were gathered together in little groups, some near Mr
Meldrum and the first-mate, who stood by the flagstaff, others along the
ridge which ran from thence above the beach, and the remainder on the
shore; but all were intent on one object, and looking down the bay at
the little speck in the distance that was said to be the boat, which was
steadily making its way towards the creek. The tide was on the ebb and
against its onward progress, although the wind was in its favour, so it
approached only very slowly.
Mr Meldrum's first intention on having his suspicions confirmed by the
mate's opinion, had been to haul down the flag--a little white ensign
made out of portions of some old silk handkerchiefs which had been
mustered amongst the party and sewn together by Kate; but, he dismissed
the idea as soon as the thought occurred to him.
"No," said he to Mr McCarthy, belaying the halliards again, "it is too
late now, for they must have seen it. Besides, what have we to fear if
they do come? We can easily prevent them from landing, if we like, for
we're nearly two to one against them in numbers should they try force;
and we are stronger by far in moral as well as physical courage!"
"True for you, sorr," replied the first-mate. "It's a good larrupping
they'd git, if they thried that on anyway. Bedad, I'd die aisy an' I
could only give that baste Moody the bating I've had in store for him
since he and his gang abandoned us, the dhirty schoundrels!"
"We must forget the past, considering we've been so mercifully
preserved," said Mr Meldrum. "Perhaps it was all for the best that we
were not able to leave the ship when they did."
"Maybe; but faix, they didn't have the dacency to ax us!"
"Well, we'll see what they have to say for themselves when we've a
chance of speaking to them," said Mr Meldrum. "The boat's coming on a
bit quicker now. It has got out of the set of the tide and has the wind
well abeam, just the thing for that lugsail she carries."
"Sure and she's a smart sailer, sorr," observed Mr McCarthy after a few
minutes' interval, during which time the longboat, which had been
heading up the coast, hauled her wind and was steered towards the
entrance of the little creek at the top of the bay, close by where the
flagstaff was erected and the Penguin Castle people were on the look-
out.
As she came nearer, however, it could be seen that Mr McCarthy's
imagination had been quicker than his eyesight, for there was no one
looking out over the gunwale--least of all Bill Moody, whose tall
herculean form and peculiar visage would have been easily recognisable
even at some distance off.
Indeed, there seemed to be very few persons in the boat at all, only two
being observed in the stern-sheets, one of whom was steering with an
oar, while a third was sitting on one of the forward thwarts attending
to the sheet of the lugsail, slacking it out as the wind came aft
occasionally, and hauling it in taut again when the sail jibed on the
boat's head falling off a point or two through the alteration of her
course now and again.
The castaways were all in a state of the greatest expectation and
surmise, as the longboat gradually grew more visible and the small
number of its occupants became noticeable; for, as she rounded the point
of the ridge, those on the beach could now observe her as well as Mr
Meldrum and the first-mate, who were by the side of the look-out man at
the signal station on the higher ground and were the only ones able at
first to see the boat.
"They look as if they'd had hard times," said Ben Boltrope, who was one
of those who could now have a look at the boat, "and some of them seem
to have lost the number of their mess."
"And a durned good job, too!" exclaimed Mr Lathrope; "the mean skunks,
to scoot away and leave a lot of wemmen and children to drown, as they
thought. They've well arned any troubles they've come by, I guess!"
"Poor creatures!" said Kate, who was standing near the American, with
Frank, of course, the inseparable, by her side; "please don't say that!
If all of us only just got what we deserved, we should have a sorry
reckoning!"
"Very proper, and just what I think," observed Mrs
Major Negus in a sort of condescending and approving way. "I do not
consider it right myself to condemn others, and never do it on
principle, for--"
"Thar you go agin, measurin' other folks' corns right away by your own
chilblains, marm," interrupted Mr Lathrope. "It's allers what you'd
do; and you never kinder give a thought to what t'other people would
have to say in the matter! I guess you're a bit narrow-minded, excuse
me, marm."
"Narrow-minded, humph!" snorted "the Major," highly indignant at the
accusation. "The idea of the thing! to be sure, Mr Lathrope, I ought
never to be surprised at anything you choose to say; your manners and
conversation are so very--ah, well--elegant!"
"Much obleeged, marm, I'm sure," said the other, chuckling at making her
angry. "I took fust-class when at school in the States for elegancy and
deportment."
"I'm sure I wish you had stopped there!" retorted the lady; but any
further amenities were arrested from passing between them by the nearer
approach of the longboat, and the fact of Mr Meldrum and those with him
coming down from the ridge so as to be on the beach when their
unexpected visitors got in to shore.
Closer and closer the boat came, until at last its keel touched ground,
when, slewing round broadside on, it was left stranded on the beach.
"Snakes and alligators!" exclaimed Mr Lathrope, the lugsail swinging
aside and enabling him and the others to see into the boat clearly, a
thing which had been previously impossible from the boat's coming up end
on. "They air a ruin lot, mister! Of all the starved, God-forsaken
critturs as I've ever seed they're 'bout the worst!"
They were.
Only the man who had been steering with the oar and the one who was on
the thwart amidships were apparently able to sit up, for three other
figures were observed stretched in the bottom of the boat in a lump
together; while one was by himself in the bows, doubled up in a
crouching posture, quite dead and with his ghastly eyes staring out
sightless from the retreating sockets. The closely-drawn features and
general appearance of this latter miserable object showed that he must
have expired in the last stage of starvation!
"Why, this is almost worse than you were when we picked you up off
Pernambuco," said Ben Boltrope to Karl Ericksen.
"Ja, ja!" replied the Norwegian. "It var sehr kalt, and we was expose
as mooch as starve; but it vor bad, very, and so is dese, it remind me,
oh! so much;" and he turned away his head, as Kate had already done,
from the hideous spectacle, quite unable to gaze any longer at it from
its association with his own rescue from a similar horrible death.
The men by Mr Meldrum's side, however--forgetting the past conduct of
the survivors of those in the longboat and the fact of their not only
having deserted them but even locked them below to drown in the hold of
the sinking ship--rushed into the water, eager, in the common exercise
of that humanity which is common to us all, but especially noticeable in
English sailors, to relieve the misery that was so apparent, and to
separate those who were living from those who had ceased to suffer; and,
of all these Good Samaritans, Mr McCarthy, who had been so bitter in
his denunciation of the mutineers, was the first to go forward, with
Frank and Mr Meldrum, you may be sure, not very far off.
"Only six out of the dozen that left the ship!" exclaimed Mr Meldrum to
the man in the stern-sheets, to whom he extended his hand to aid him in
getting out of the boat. "Where are the rest of your number?"
But the emaciated wretch--who seemed to have suffered considerable
bodily injury as well as want of food, for one of his arms hung down
powerless at his side, and there was a broad cut across his face from
some weapon--was as incapable of speech as he was apparently of moving.
His lips only worked feebly, without any sound coming from them, and he
stumbled and fell forwards on his face when he tried to rise by the aid
of Mr Meldrum's arm.
"Bedad, they're in a bad way, sorr," said Mr McCarthy sympathisingly,
coming up and helping Mr Meldrum to lift the man out and place him on
the beach, where he had already laid down the corpse that had been in
the bows, throwing a bit of the sail over it to hide it for the time
from observation. "The poor divil can't spake, sure. I wondther which
of them it wor? I'm blest if I can make him out, and I knew all the men
purty well, most of them being in my own watch, by the same token."
But just then, the stewardess saved him from puzzling over the man's
face any further.
"It's Llewellyn, my husband!" she cried out, pushing Mr McCarthy away,
and taking the almost lifeless figure he was supporting tenderly in her
arms, oblivious of everything save of her natural womanly pity and love.
"The poor fellow! the poor fellow!" and she burst into tears over the
miserable semblance of the man, who, coward and deserter as he had
proved himself to be, had yet once been dear to her as her husband.
"Ah! then he accompanied them too!" said Mr Meldrum reflectively to the
first-mate, as the last man was raised from the bottom of the boat and
carried as tenderly ashore as if he had been one of their own party and
a loved shipmate. "So there were thirteen of them altogether, instead
of twelve, as I thought! That makes seven unaccounted for. I wonder
what became of them!"
"Sure and the divil only knows," replied the first-mate laconically,
"for Bill Moody, the baste, must be along o' them, as he's not with
these here; and he was sartain to be will looked afther by the ould
gintleman in black down below!"
"Hush!" said Mr Meldrum. "If he is dead, let him rest in peace!"
"Aye, aye, sort; so say I," answered Mr McCarthy; "and may joy go with
him, for he was the broth of a boy!"
Bye and bye, when Llewellyn, the steward, recovered sufficiently to be
able to speak, he had a terrible tale to tell.
On the outbreak of the row on board the ship, he said, between Captain
Dinks and Moody, he was about to slip forward to join Snowball in the
galley to have a warm, for he found it cold in his pantry; and, besides,
he had no one to speak to there, and he felt dull and cheerless.
Frightened at the altercation and afraid of getting hurt in the scuffle
that arose, he hid himself in the bows of the longboat; and, as luck
would happen, he was there when the boat was launched and went away from
the side of the vessel with the mutineers, for he could not scramble out
in time.
Bill Moody, said the steward, wanted to chuck him over board when he was
discovered; but the rest of the men overruled him, and he was allowed to
remain.
The boat was carried far to leeward, and so pitched about by the heavy
sea which was running, that every moment they thought she would be
swamped. They had to bale her out continuously, for the waves broke
over her each moment, half-filling her on many occasions.
Fortunately, they were not dashed ashore in the darkness against the
cliffs, which they could faintly see through the haze to be quite close;
and towards daylight they were able to get up the fore-sail and steer
her along the land, which stretched far away down to the southward,
miles away from where they had left the ship. The mutineers tried all
they could to find some place where they could beach the boat without
risk of getting her stove in on the rocks; but their efforts were vain.
At last, they came past a mountain which was smoking, and as the shore
seemed to shelve down here, Moody determined to endeavour to land there,
saying that they would find the vicinity of the volcano warm and
comfortable--better than some frozen ice-glaciers which they had noticed
further north.
After many attempts and failures, they managed to run the boat on to a
black sandy stretch of beach which opened out beyond the smoking
mountain; and here, they unloaded her in safety.
They had then more provisions than would have lasted them for months
with care.
"All of ourn!" ejaculated Mr Lathrope, interrupting the steward at this
point of the narrative. "We would ha' swopped some o' them penguins and
Kerguelen cabbage fur the lot, I guess."
But, continued Llewellyn, the men wasted all the stores, recklessly
destroying much more than they ate; for they pitched away half-consumed
cans of preserved meat, opening fresh ones with the greatest
carelessness before requiring them.
Besides all this, there was the drink--a curse which followed them from
the ship.
Moody had contrived to secrete a cask of rum in the boat before quitting
the wreck, and this was opened soon after landing, he and most of the
mutineers drinking themselves drunk and indulging in the wildest orgies
whilst it lasted.
One evening, about a week after they had got ashore, in the middle of a
drunken debauch Moody set fire to a tent, which they had constructed out
of some of the spare sails placed in the boat. It was completely burnt,
many of the men being almost roasted alive before they could extricate
themselves and three dying subsequently from the injuries they had then
received.
This was not the worst, however; for, in addition to the tent, their
entire stock of provisions, which were stored inside, was consumed; and,
beyond a few of the half-eaten tins that had been previously thrown
away, they had nothing afterwards left to eat.
Starvation stared them in the face.
"Did you not search about and find the cabbage that we got here?" asked
Mr Meldrum.
"No," replied the steward; "the whole land thereabouts, before the snow
fell, was as bare as a brick-field, and just as black and burnt up
like."
"And did no seals or birds come?"
"Some animals swam in one day," said Llewellyn, "but the men were drunk
at the time and frightened them away; so they never came back again when
we needed them. Only a stray gull or two occasionally flew by, so far
out of reach that none of us could catch them."
"Well, go on to tell the story in your own way," said Mr Meldrum.
Their hunger got so great, the man proceeded to say, that they hunted
about for stray ham-bones, and even gnawed the soles of their boots; and
at last Bill Moody said they would have to cast lots and sacrifice one
of their number for the good of the rest.
"Oh, the dhirty cannibal!" interposed Mr McCarthy. "He'd be quite
capable of that; bad cess to the baste!"
There were now only ten of them left, with himself, continued Llewellyn,
and he could see that Moody wanted him to be killed, it being all a
pretence about casting lots. Some of the men saw through the plot, too,
as well as he did and took his part. It was then that a fight came
about, and in it he got that slash across his face which they had
noticed.
Moody's own particular adherents amongst the party were only four in
number; but they had all got pistols, which the others did not possess;
and Llewellyn's party would probably have got the worst of it had not an
awful thing happened.
Just at the moment the fight began, the smoking mountain blew up!
"An eruption of the volcano," said Mr Meldrum.
The steward did not know anything about that. He explained that, while
they were in the midst of the struggle, a lot of fire and stones came
down upon them, and Moody and some of the other mutineers were crushed
to death outright. The survivors, with himself, then managed to push
down the longboat into the sea again, and made off from the terrible
place--coasting back along the coast in the hope of coming across one of
the settlements of the whaling vessels, which some of them had heard
frequented the island.
When they were suffering the last extremities of hunger and thirst--the
latter being a fresh privation, for they had had plenty of water to
drink on the volcano beach, however much they had wanted food--they saw
the flag of the "Penguin Castle" settlers, and made towards it as well
as they were able.
"And, thank God, I'm here with you all!" concluded the steward when he
had brought his narrative to this point. "I have been saved from a
horrible death."
"Arrah, sure, all's well that inds will!" said Mr McCarthy; "but I'm
glad you weren't a desarter, as I thought you were; and I'm roight glad,
too, that that thafe of a Moody has mit with his desarts at last!"