LUX VENIT AB ALTO.
Pity for Mr. Basset, and intense commiseration for his two daughters,
soon gave place in the hearts of his friends to a dire longing for
vengeance on the treacherous authors of this new atrocity.
"Secure the door, Morley--quick, or they may be on us!" cried Heriot,
as he threw off his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeves.
"There is no danger of their attacking us," replied Morley Ashton,
panting and breathless.
"Why so?" asked Phillips, with an oath.
"Because these wretches are already busy with the brandy jar."
"All the better," replied the Scotch doctor, with a sombre frown.
"Keep your pistols and the gun ready--pot the first villain who comes
within range through the skylight. Poor Mr. Basset! poor Mr. Basset!
Bartelot and Morrison, assist me, please; we have work to do--quick,
before the ladies awake and hear us."
The body of Mr. Basset was laid on Captain Phillips's bed, and the
hateful rope which still compressed his throat, together with the
cord that secured his wrists, was cut off and flung away by Heriot's
ready hand.
Blackened, swollen in features, and horribly disfigured, with
protruding eyes and tongue, few would have recognised, save by his
dress, the bland and smiling smooth-skinned, close-shaved, and rather
florid gentleman of a few minutes ago.
"Dead--quite dead!" groaned Morley, as he hung over him; "my poor
friend--oh, my poor friend! so kind--so gentle--so amiable!"
"What a fate his has been!" added Tom Bartelot.
"And who is to tell it to his poor girls?" said Morrison.
"Ethel, at least," whispered Heriot with a significant glance at
Morley, "must be kept as long as possible in ignorance; after the
shock of last night to know of this might have a most serious effect
upon her nervous system."
"Papa, papa, speak with me, please!" they heard her soft, pleasant
voice say at that moment.
"Say what you will or can, Ashton; but Miss Basset must not see her
father yet," said Heriot, hastily; "the shock, as I have said, might
be dangerous, for his aspect is terrible."
"Speak to me, dear papa, for one moment. I have had such a horrible
dream, and all about you," she said again.
Amid the deep muttered expressions of rage and commiseration made by
his companions, Morley, pale and trembling, tapped at her cabin door,
and, opening it a little way, whispered that Mr. Basset was asleep,
and must not be disturbed.
"Must not," she repeated with alarm; "is papa ill?"
"Oh, no; but----"
"But what?"
"Only in a deep sleep," he replied, with a sigh of bitterness, as he
closed the door, fearing to excite her alarm further.
"Is this fatal outrage completed?--is the poor gentleman quite dead?"
asked Captain Phillips, in a low and impressive voice.
"I fear so, I fear so," replied Heriot, with growing agitation; "I
can detect no sign whatever of life, and even warmth is passing away."
"But remember, doctor," said Morrison, earnestly and anxiously, "that
the time of--of strangulation was short, and death by being run up to
the yardarm is not so instantaneous as by the drop from a regular
scaffold ashore."
"Of course, Morrison, I know that; but----" the doctor paused, and
shook his head sadly.
"Horrible difference!" thought Morley, with a shudder of mingled rage
and grief, while he clenched his teeth and hands.
"But our poor friend was a heavy man and of a full habit. He is
already becoming cold. No breath--no pulsation," added Heriot,
placing his hand on Mr. Basset's heart.
"Quite dead, you think?" asked Morley, whose eyes filled with tears,
as the memory of happy years long past, and sincere pity for the two
girls, rushed into his mind.
"Beyond hope, I fear," muttered Heriot, who, however, still
continued, mechanically, as it were, to feel the pulse and chafe the
rigid limbs.
"The scoundrels--the black-hearted scoundrels! Oh, to have revenge
for all this!" exclaimed Captain Phillips, stamping his feet on the
cabin floor.
"Our numbers decrease. First we lost poor Manfredi, then Joe, the
steward, then Sam Quail, and now Mr. Basset," said Foster, the second
mate; "whose turn will it be next?"
"Hush!--remember the young ladies," said Heriot, looking up,
warningly.
Cold nearly, ghastly pale, where not livid and discoloured, and
rendered horrible in feature by past convulsions, poor Mr. Basset's
case seemed, indeed, hopeless; yet Leslie Heriot, inspired by his
love for Rose, by perhaps something of the dogged perseverance of his
country, by the regard he really bore Mr. Basset, and an enthusiasm
for his profession, with a reliance on his own skill, which was by no
means small; imbued, we say, by all these, he felt inclined to
attempt something unusual in his art, and proceeded at once to put it
in practice.
As the idea of struggling with death, of restoring life and animation
to that still and corpse-like form, occurred to him, a sudden light
shone in the handsome young doctor's eyes; his cheek flushed, and
there was a charming brightness and animation in all his features, as
he bustled about, and unlocked the medicine-chest and case of
instruments.
"At all events I will try, I will try," he muttered to himself; "in
great attempts 'tis glorious e'en, to fail."
He perceived that blood oozed out from a cut in the forehead,
received when the body of their victim was flung by the mutineers
through the skylight into the cabin.
The sight of this blood gave him fresh hope, and he commenced
operations at once, and with confident determination, while those
around, who had never witnessed such a scene, or heard of such an
attempt before, beheld him with wonder, and obeyed all his orders
with alacrity.
With his love for Rose, and his medical enthusiasm, there mingled
something of religious fervour and much of human kindness, and
selecting carefully a lancet, he almost uttered a prayer of hope, as
he opened the temporal artery, and then the external jugular--a vein
which runs along the neck, just beneath the skin, and returns the
blood from the head to the heart; but he sighed with doubt on finding
the circulation stopped in both, and that a little coagulated blood
only appeared at each orifice.
With the assistance of Morley and Tom Bartelot, he stripped the body
in haste, and proceeded to rub the back, mouth, and neck vigorously,
with volatile salts and fine oil.
When they grew weary, Captain Phillips and Mr. Foster relieved them,
and the arms and legs were well lubricated in the same fashion, to
restore and promote circulation.
Puffs of strong tobacco were blown up the nostrils and into the
mouth, when these were compressed; but an hour and more elapsed
without any sign of returning animation, and even Heriot was
beginning to despair (as his companions had done long before) when,
after making a small incision in the skin of the windpipe, through
which, with his own breath, he sought to inflate the lungs, by
breathing strongly through a cannula, a cry of joy escaped him.
The blood from the temporal artery was now trickling down the pale,
discoloured face!
Heriot snatched up Mr. Basset's right hand, and applied his fingers
to the wrist.
"The pulse--the pulse begins to beat!" he exclaimed; "quick,
Morley!--place that bottle of sal-ammoniac under his nostrils."
Morley did so, and soon an exclamation escaped from all, on beholding
Mr. Basset open and close each eye alternately.
He was then raised up in the kind and sturdy arms of Noah Gawthrop,
while Heriot poured some warm brandy-and-water down his throat; after
which a sound like a groan left his lips.
"Victory! blessed be God!" exclaimed Heriot, as he struck his hands
together, and thought of Rose Basset, with her sweet loving smiles,
and an honest moisture dimmed his eyes; "he lives, after all!"
"Thanks to your skill, doctor," said Tom Bartelot; "the world should
hear of this."
"Nay--no thanks to me," replied Heriot; "what used we to learn at
school, Morrison? _Lux venit ab alto!_"
"'All light comes from above,'" translated Morrison, without
hesitation.
A low wail beside them made all turn from the bed whereon the body
lay, and, to their dismay, they beheld Ethel standing near, pale as
death, mute and rigid, her large dark eyes dilated with blank horror
and bewilderment, while surveying the scene before her, as if she
strove, but failed, to realise or understand it.