A SNARE LAID.
On Ethel the effects of all she had undergone--a terror equal to the
menace of death--the memory of all she had seen, Pedro bleeding from
the bullet of Hawkshaw, and the latter torn back to be butchered in
the very den from which he had rescued her, produced fits of hysteria
and violent sickness, requiring all the skill of Dr. Heriot to soothe
and subdue them.
For a time she lay in a fainting fit as in a deep sleep, with her
breathing so low that it could scarcely be perceived on a mirror.
Morley was in an agony of alarm, lest she should never wake more; but
this symptom was followed by strong convulsions, till tears relieved
and left her very weak.
However, she was able to relate at intervals what had taken place,
and how she had escaped the mutineers; after this, she was left for a
time to the care of Nance Folgate, who was great in the use of burnt
feathers, hartshorn, and asafoetida.
With Rose, on recovering from her swoon, joy for her sister's sudden
restoration took the form of alternate showers of tears and bursts of
ringing hysterical laughter, which were painful to hear and difficult
to allay, so, between them, the poor doctor had his hands quite full.
Morley and his nautical friends, who had never seen anything of this
kind before, were sorely puzzled by the turns and symptoms of Rose's
ailment; for there is but little difference sometimes between the
crying and the laughing of an hysterical young lady.
Physical and mental exhaustion at length brought on sleep, and Rose
and Ethel lay with arms entwined, the terrible past and the dreaded
future being alike committed to oblivion, unless when, at intervals,
the latter seemed to see, in fancy, those grimy visages peering out
from the dark berths, freezing her with affright, and Pedro's black
and gloating eyes stupefying her with their terrible expression.
Gradually, however, both sisters were soothed, and calm with perfect
sleep came together.
The sliding-door to the steerage was made fast by strong screws
against all attempts by that avenue for the future.
"Well," whispered Heriot, as they withdrew into the cabin, "matters
are improving for us forward."
"How?" asked Tom Bartelot gloomily.
"Pedro Barradas has his right arm shattered--you heard Miss Basset
say so--and then there is Hawkshaw killed and flung overboard."
"Poor wretch!" said Morley.
"Two almost out of their rogues' mess," added Captain Phillips; "but
I don't think Hawkshaw was very warm in their cursed business."
"His poor father, jolly old Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn, little
foresaw an end so miserable for his only son. Poor Tom! how he did
love that boy!" exclaimed Mr. Basset, wringing his hands, as he
thought of his old friend.
"Judging from the state in which Miss Basset says she found those
fellows forward," said Morrison, "I don't see why we shouldn't make
an effort to recapture the ship, and make every one of them walk the
plank."
"My very thoughts, Mr. Morrison," said Captain Phillips, with great
earnestness; "but, as yet, they still outnumber us, and, unless by
stratagem, I don't see a way in the matter--a fair trial of strength
would only end in our own defeat."
"Something is worth tryin', sir--I'm precious weary o' bein' bottled
down here, like a rat in the cable tier," said Noah Gawthrop, who was
on his knees, lighting, and puffing with distended cheeks, at a fire
in the cabin-grate, preparatory to boiling coffee, for the morning
was far advanced, and no one thought of sleeping now, even on the
cabin-locker; "but you see, your honour, unless we had 'em all in the
bilboes, or shoved clean overboard, we could never be safe."
"Not even if we had them all secured in the bunks, and the
forescuttle shipped and battened over them?" interrupted Morley.
"No, sir, not even then," replied Noah very emphatically.
"How so?"
"'Cos, if you didn't smother 'em, they'd set the ship on fire, that
all on us might go to old Davy together. The greatest warmints on
land and sea are them Espanoles, as comes from South 'Meriker--I
knows 'em, I does."
"Egad, Noah is right," said Tom Bartelot; "and to get the
weather-gage of these fellows we must try some other plan than
fisticuffs."
During this time the crew were all heard on deck rumbling about,
growling and uttering threats; and by the number of seas shipped over
the bows, by the lurching and pitching of the vessel, it was evident
to those below that the wind had freshened, and that an unsteady hand
was on the wheel, as she was yawing, and steering wild.
By noon Ethel was almost composed, and when she reclined on her bed,
with one hand clasped by her father, another in Morley's, Rose
bending over her, and worthy young Dr. Heriot hovering about, she
felt soothed; through all her overtaxed frame there seemed to flow a
tranquillising and magnetic influence; she almost forgot that the
same ship contained, but a few yards off, the source of her recent
terror; her over-wrought mind grew calm, and the fever passed out of
her.
"Dear papa--dear papa--kiss me. Sit closer, Morley dear," she said,
in a sweet, low voice; "where is your hand, Morley?"
"Here--clasped on yours, Ethel."
"Oh, papa, if poor mamma only knew of all this!" she was beginning,
when tears choked her utterance.
"Do not think of these things," whispered Morley, anxiously; "it is
well she is not with us."
"Even her loss was merciful, though it nearly broke my heart, for all
this would have killed her," said Mr. Basset, in a low voice.
"Oh, when will it end!--when will it end!" sobbed Rose.
"When we reeve some of those fellows up to the yard-arm, in the loop
of a stout line," said Dr. Heriot. "I can't help feeling assured
that we shall weather them, yet, and my countryman, Morrison, who,
perhaps, has the gift of the second sight, among his other
accomplishments, is of the same opinion," added Heriot, with a
pleasant laugh to raise their spirits.
Ethel felt safe comparatively--protected and restored; but at what a
price--a human life! The life of that misguided being who first cast
a shadow on her path.
She recalled his last words and forgave him all, for his closing act
had been one of devotion towards herself. But for him, she might, or
must have been, destroyed. The imagination of all from which he had
saved her made her shudder in her soul, and froze her very marrow!
Poor Hawkshaw, she might almost call him now, as he had gone so
summarily to his dread account, gashed with many a wound, and cast
into the sea, without prayer, or shroud, or grave--cast with all his
sins and errors on his head and on his soul!
She shuddered, we say, as she thought fearfully of these dire things,
and clasped more tightly the kind hands of those who sat beside her.
Morley, too, felt that he could freely forgive Hawkshaw now; for his
nature was brave, generous, and gentle, and he wondered whether, when
dying, that unfortunate wretch had felt what _he_ endured--first,
when he was flung over Acton Chine; and, second, when the shattered
wreck of the _Princess_ parted, and he found himself, as he believed,
drowning in the water--the intense rapidity with which thought and
memory rushed through his soul, as he hung for a moment between two
lives, one to come, and one that seemed passing away--how all the
loves and memories, faces of friends and foes, sins of omission and
commission, all the errors and shortcomings of his existence flashed
with the rapidity of light upon his maddened mind; bodily suffering,
on those two occasions, he had none--it was all mental, and the most
acute of its kind.
Had Hawkshaw felt all this when the death-shot rang in his ears, and
the assassins' knives were clashing in his body?
He must have felt this emotion; and Morley, with that conviction, and
the knowledge that he (Hawkshaw) had saved Ethel Basset at the price
of his own unhappy existence, felt in his honest heart that he could
freely forgive him all the past.
But this spirit of forgiveness by no means extended itself to Pedro
Barradas, against whom he cherished the most undying vengeance, when
he thought of the terror Ethel had suffered at his hands, and, more
than all, the horrors she had escaped.
Meanwhile, the elder Barradas, maddened with the agony occasioned by
his shattered limb, which none on board, save Dr. Heriot, could dress
or reduce--for the fracture was compound, the ball and socket of the
elbow being completely smashed--was scheming out revenge and fresh
outrages, which he found a difficulty in putting in practice, as the
same wound which reduced his bodily strength, and stung his soul with
rage and pain, deprived him of the influence he formerly exercised
over his companions--an influence that he maintained physically
rather than morally.
He supposed that they must be several miles up the Mozambique
Channel, and he remembered the Malay proas; thus every hour rendered
the necessity greater for having entire possession of the ship and
for destroying those in the cabin, for if but one of these escaped,
he and all his companions might yet swing as pirates, and, knowing
that Mr. Basset was a lawyer--a judge or legal functionary of high
position--caused the crew to cherish a peculiar dread and aversion of
him in particular.
There were times when, in the intervals of his bodily and mental
fury--both of which the copious use of ardent spirits had greatly
inflamed--he conceived the idea of running the ship ashore on the
first land he made, or of setting her on fire in mid-ocean, that all
might perish, and so frequently did he mutter of these things that
Zuares, Badger, Sharkey, and the rest, knowing the desperation of his
character, and the resolute cruelty of which he was capable, feared
that he might put his terrible threats into execution.
As for asking Dr. Heriot to dress his wound, or by a touch of his
skill to lessen the agony that wrung the bead-drops from his tawny
brow, he never thought of such a thing! To expect an act of such
mercy or generosity never occurred to his cruel mind as being within
the compass of possibility; but he now conceived and prepared to
execute a very subtle plan for gaining possession of Ethel Basset,
and through her, as hostage, compelling Heriot to dress his shattered
limb, after which he would destroy them all without mercy; and as
these ideas occurred to him he gnashed his sharp white teeth and
uttered a roar that was something between a laugh of savage
exultation and a howl of agony.