and when I came on deck at eight I found a fresh breeze blowing off the
beam, a wide scene of dark blue sea running in lines of froth, and the
bluff bows of the _Palestine_ bursting in thunder through the surge and
driving the foam before her beyond the flying-jibboom end. The brightness
of the day, the beauty of the scene, the swift dance of the old hooker,
put some heart into all of us who lived aft. Yet we could talk of
nothing but the murder. I suggested somnambulism; the doctor listened
to me with a dark smile, then walked away. Mr. Barlow said that sooner
or later we should find out that one of the soldiers had done it. In
the course of the day Captain Gordon and Dr. Saunders went below, where
they stayed long, questioning closely. I was on deck at dinner-time, and
heard Mr. Barlow warmly defending himself against the accusation of the
two military men, who, as I gathered, had declared that he exhibited an
indifference and seemed to fail in his duty by neglecting to push his
investigations to further lengths in the forecastle. This talk made me
feel very hot; but Mr. Barlow was well able to take care of himself, and
wound up a highly-flavoured protest against Captain Gordon’s observations
by asserting that his own suspicions strongly pointed to the soldiers.
Well, the precautions of the previous night were renewed on this; the
cuddy door was guarded, and from time to time one or another made the
rounds of the cabins. I had the morning watch, that is, from four till
eight. The hour was about half-past six. The watch was busy in washing
down the forecastle and fore-deck, and a number of convicts were
scrubbing at the planks in the prison enclosure. I stood at the brass
rail watching a picture that was full of life and colour. A light breeze
followed us; the sea was a delicate blue, and rolled in flowing folds,
and the sails sank like breathing beasts to the curtsying of the ship
upon the swell. It was fiery hot, and the sunshine came tingling off its
own reflection in the sea like clouds of flaming needles.
I turned, and found the ship’s steward at my elbow. His face was as
white as veal. I never could have imagined the countenance capable of
such an expression of horror as his carried. His mouth was dry, and he
mumbled, without articulation, and put out his hand, as though feeling
for something in the air.
“Oh, sir!”
“What is it?”
“Dr. Saunders——”
“What of him? What of him?”
“Murdered, sir! His throat cut. God have mercy, it’s a sight that’s going
to last me for ever!”
For some moments I stood motionless, idly and mechanically exclaiming,
“Dr. Saunders murdered Dr. Saunders murdered!” Then, calling to one of
the best seamen in my watch, I bade him look after the ship whilst I ran
below, and the steward followed me down the companion ladder.
I went straight to the doctor’s berth. It was next Captain Gordon’s, on
the starboard side. The steward, in his fright and flight, had left the
door open, and I had no need to enter the berth to witness the dreadful
spectacle.
“Murder!” suddenly screamed the steward at my elbow, in some hysteric
paroxysm of horror. “Who’s doing it? who’s doing it?”
His loud cries awakened the sleepers round about; in a moment Captain
Gordon, Lieutenant Venables, and Mr. Barlow rushed out of their cabins.
The group of us entered the cabin of the slaughtered man and looked at
the corpse, and then stood staring at one another. The head was half
severed; under the bunk the cabin floor was black with blood; but, as in
the case of the murder of the captain, so now—everything was in its place.
We went into the cuddy, closing the door upon the murdered man. It was
scarcely to be realized that _he_ had fallen a victim. One somehow felt
the terror in it more strongly than in the assassination of the commander
of the ship, though, to be sure, as captain, his had been out and away
the more valuable life.
“Venables,” cried Captain Gordon, “tell the sergeant to fall in the guard
at once. Mr. Barlow—do not think I wish to dictate—will not you be acting
wisely in summoning the whole of the ship’s company aft, acquainting
them with this second crime, and making them understand that whilst the
villain who has done these things remains undiscovered, no man’s life is
safe aboard this vessel?”
Mr. Barlow simply bowed, but in a manner that let Captain Gordon know his
wishes would be complied with; I followed him on deck, he was deathly
white and dreadfully agitated and horror-stricken. I spoke to him; he
stared wildly at me and merely cried, “Who is it that’s doing it? Who is
it that’s doing it?”
But already the news of this second murder had gone forward; no need for
the boatswain to sound his whistle; all hands were on deck, and they came
tumbling aft with scared looks to the first cry I raised. The guard had
assembled on the poop, but when the mate and I came on deck the last of
the convicts who had been helping to wash down was passing through the
boarded gangway into the hatch, with the subaltern waiting to see him
disappear. The three sentries, forward and amidships, stood motionless,
the bright lines of their bayonets close against their cheeks.
By this time the mate had collected his mind; he addressed the crew with
passion and in strong language, told them what had happened, swore that
no man’s life was safe, and exhorted them as Englishmen to work like
fiends to discover the assassin if he was one of them.
“Whoever the murderer is, he don’t sling his hammock in our fo’k’s’le,”
shouted a sailor.
Another bawled, “We’ll do everything that’s right, sir, but don’t let the
guffies reckon that there’s any bloody cut-throats amongst _us_.”
“Look for your man in the ’tween-decks,” shouted a third.
A whole volley of this sort of thing was fired off by the crew. Captain
Gordon spoke to them quietly, and then turned to his own men; his manner
was gentlemanly and dignified. The full spirit of the British officer was
expressed in him as he stood speaking, with one hand grasping the brass
rail.
This time the murder was one of real bloodshed; there should be a clue,
therefore, to hunt after, were it but a fragment of stained apparel, or
an unowned knife with marks of human butchery upon it. The sailors roared
to me to follow them forward and watch them overhaul their forecastle.
But nothing came of it. As before, every chest, every bunk, every hammock
was ransacked, and now the seamen handled one another’s clothes. But it
was all to no purpose, and I came out of the forecastle hot as fire and
sick at heart, and went aft with my report to Mr. Barlow.
They had not been idle at the cuddy end of the ship. It was owing to
the suggestion of Lieutenant Venables that two convicts, who had been
thief-takers in their day, hounds of justice, afterwards cast, the
one for housebreaking, the other for “smashing:” it was owing to the
subaltern that these two men were brought out of the prisoners’ quarters
and put to the task (guarded by a couple of soldiers) of discovering the
murderer. One was a thick-set, beetle-browed man, the other slim, with
a cast eye and a fixed leering smile. They spent the whole day in this
hunt. They searched every cabin aft, questioned the soldiers who had been
on sentry duty at the cuddy door during the night, explored every box,
locker, whatever was to be met with in that way. They tumbled my clothes
about in my cabin and obliged me to undress myself; but then they served
Gordon, Venables, and Barlow so. They swore the murders were not the work
of a convict; indeed, it was perfectly certain no prisoner could by any
possibility break out of the ’tween-decks during the night when the gates
were secured and the sentries posted.
The two convict-searchers then went to the forecastle, but the Jacks
there, on learning the object of the fellows’ visit, said that no
blooming oakum-pickers would be allowed to pass through the forescuttle;
they had overhauled one another and all that their sea-parlour contained,
and the second officer who had looked on had gone away satisfied; and a
powerful sailor acting as the crews’ spokesman swore with a huge oath
that if the two prisoners attempted to enter the forecastle the men would
lash them back to back and heave them overboard.
Captain Gordon asked that the hold should be again thoroughly searched.
I put in at this, and said the boatswain and I and others had overhauled
the ship’s inside from fore to after peak.
“No good in walking round and round a job,” exclaimed Mr. Barlow. “What’s
been done _is_ done, gentlemen. There’s no murderer under hatches. How’s
he to come up unseen? The cuddy-door sentry guards the steerage-hatch;
the main-hatch and forecastle are watched by your men.”
There was nothing more to be done. The body of the doctor was dropped
over the side, and it was now for Captain Gordon and the subaltern to
see after the prisoners. A feeling of consternation took possession of
us all. Every man looked at his fellows with more or less of distrust.
Who was to be the next victim, and who was the fiend that was doing these
murders? Where did he lurk? Which of all the people you saw moving about
the ship as soldiers, sailors, prisoners was he? And what was his object?
The arms chest was brought into the cuddy, and the four of us who now
occupied the after part of the vessel slept with loaded weapons at our
side, and every half-hour during the night, at the sound of the bell, the
cry, “All’s well!” went from sentinel to sentinel, and regularly at every
hour an armed soldier, and one of the seamen under the eye of the mate of
the watch—whether the boatswain or myself—went the rounds of the cuddy,
pausing, listening, looking into the cabins to see that all was right.
This was precaution enough, you might think, with the addition of a
cuddy-door sentry urged into exquisite vigilance by stern instructions
and by fears for his own throat.
Well, after the doctor was found murdered, ten days passed, and nothing
in any way to alarm us happened. In this time we sneaked across the
equator, and our taut bowlines snatched some life for the ship out of a
dead-on-end southerly breeze, with a short, staggering roll of foaming
blue water and a heavy westerly swell. It fell out, by the revolution of
the watches, that I took charge of the deck on this tenth day from eight
o’clock till midnight. The military officers turned in at eleven. Mr.
Barlow stayed to yarn with me, and our talk was mainly about the two
murders, and I noticed that the mate still seemed to believe that it was
the work of a soldier. He went below whilst some one was striking five
bells—half-past eleven. I watched him pass under the skylight; he stood a
moment or two looking up at the lamp as though he thought the dim flame
should be further dimmed, then drank a glass of water and passed out of
sight.
The boatswain relieved me at eight bells. I gave him the course and
certain instructions, and specially exhorted him to see that the round
of the cuddy was punctually made. I went to my cabin by way of the
quarter-deck; a sentry stood posted, as usual, at the cuddy door, and I
could dimly discern the figure of a second soldier at the main-hatch. My
cabin was immediately abreast of the one that had been occupied by Dr.
Saunders. Before lying down I looked to the brace of pistols we all of us
aft now slept with, and then, as heretofore, peeped under the bunk, and
took a careful squint round about....
I was startled into instant broad wakefulness by a heavy groan, the
report of a musket, and a sharp savage cry as of a man cursing whilst
he stabs and slays another. The report of the musket in the resonant
interior of the little cuddy sounded like the explosion of a magazine.
I rushed out in trousers and shirt, grasping one of the pistols; but I
was not the first. Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Venables were before
me; Mr. Barlow sprang through his cabin door as I ran through mine;
the boatswain was also tumbling down the companion steps, and I heard
the noise of the feet of the watch racing aft along the deck, and
exclamations of the soldiers coming through the booby-hatch.
The figure of a man lay upon the cuddy floor between the table and the
steerage hatchway, and beside him stood a sentry in the act of wrenching
his bayonet out of the prostrate body. I turned up the lamp; the cuddy
was fast filling. There was a universal growling and crying of questions.
“See to the prisoners, Venables!” I heard Captain Gordon say, and the
subaltern shoved through the crowd to the door, calling for the guard.
“Turn him over. Who is it?” exclaimed Mr. Barlow.
I drew close to the motionless man on deck. Meanwhile the soldier who
had killed him was standing at attention with his eyes fixed on Captain
Gordon, and the bayonet in his musket dripping red in the lamplight. A
couple of seamen turned the body—it had fallen sideways to the thrust of
the steel, with its face upon deck.
“Stand out of the light!” cried Mr. Barlow.
“Great heavens!” exclaimed Captain Gordon; “it’s the prisoner Simon Rolt!”
_Simon Rolt!_ There before us on the deck, dead, with the thrust of a
bayonet through his heart, with a long, gleaming sheath-knife firmly
grasped in his right hand, lay the corpse of the man who had fallen
overboard—whom we all supposed lay drowned at the bottom of the sea weeks
ago—whom we had all as utterly forgotten as though his memory had been
no more than one of the bubbles which had floated to the surface with his
plunge! We could not credit the evidence of our sight. Then, indeed, the
suspicion of some enormous scheme of treachery as concerned the convicts
seemed to visit all in that cabin assembled, as though we had been one
man.
“He’ll have had a confederate,” shouted a voice.
“He was for murdering the officers, and then the convicts ’ud have rose
and killed all hands,” bawled another with lungs of storm.
“Silence!” cried Captain Gordon, and he questioned the sentry, who,
standing bolt upright in a cool, collected way, told this story. Having
crossed the deck, leaving the cabin door on his left, he happened to
glance through the window into the interior, and saw what he supposed was
a shadow cast by the dimly-burning lamp upon the head of the steerage
steps. He shrank and put himself out of sight of it, though commanding it
still, and presently he saw it stir and scrawl into the shape of a human
head and shoulders. The sneaking subtle bulk rose clear of the steps,
and noiselessly as the shadow of a cloud it was creeping aft into the
gloom under the table when the sentry swiftly stepped into the door and
challenged it. Up sprang the man: in a few beats of the heart his long
knife would have been through the soldier; but the redcoat was too quick
for him: the bayonet pierced the devil’s breast, and at the same moment
the musket, which the soldier had cocked, exploded. The convict fell
dead with a single groan, but the soldier in his rage stabbed him thrice
to make sure of him, cursing him loudly as he drove the steel home.
Some seamen picked up the body and put it away in one of the cabins. The
cuddy was then cleared and a wet swab brought along to cleanse the deck;
but until dawn the sailors stood about in the waist and gangways talking.
A quiet wind held the canvas motionless, and the ship stole softly
through the shadow of the darkest hours of the night. Mr. Barlow told me
that when daybreak came I must go into the hold and find out where the
villain had hidden himself. The military men and the mate and I lingered
in the cuddy in conversation.
“Was it Rolt himself who jumped overboard, or was the figure some dummy?”
said Captain Gordon, who immediately added, “Oh, it must have been the
convict. How could he have got aft?”
“I saw him jump. Many must have seen him,” said I.
“How did he get on board?” exclaimed Lieutenant Venables.
“I’ll tell you what’s in my head, gentlemen,” said I. “I’ve been turning
the matter over; you’ll find I’m right, I believe. There was the end of
the main-brace hanging over the quarter. I took notice of it as we pulled
under the ship’s stern. That brace was taken off its pin and lowered by a
confederate hand. I heard a low whistle sound through the ship before the
man sprang.”
“So did I,” said Captain Gordon. “You’ll remember, Venables, I asked you
if you heard it?”
“We’ll find out who was at the wheel that night when the man jumped
overboard,” exclaimed the mate.
“Pray go on with your notions, Mr. Barker,” said Captain Gordon. “I fancy
you’ve hit the truth.”
“Why,” I continued, “suppose the thing preconcerted, and Rolt with a
confederate amongst the crew; the whistle signalled all ready for the
jump; a few silent strokes would bring the convict to the end of the
main-brace, and the rest signified merely a hand-over-hand climb, with
the mizzen-chains as a black hiding-place till the ship was silent. I
take it that the man got round into the captain’s cabin window; he found
it open, entered, and strangled the commander, who probably started up on
the villain entering.”
“That’ll be it certainly, gentlemen,” said Mr. Barlow, looking from one
to another of the officers. “The convict,” he continued, “found the cuddy
empty, and made his way into the steerage. But he would need a plan of
the ship in his head to hide himself. Who’s the scoundrel amongst the
crew that helped him?”
At daybreak the boatswain and I went below into the steerage. We found
the after-peak hatch-cover off, whence it was clear that the man had
hidden in that part of the ship. We again thoroughly examined the hold,
but we could not imagine how and where the man had secreted his square
powerful form so as to completely baffle our first search. We found a
large cask about a quarter full of ship’s bread. The head was off and
lying near. The boatswain thought that the convict might have concealed
himself in that cask, heading himself up in it; and to prove that this
could be done he got in, holding the head, which he put on when he was
inside. If this cask had been the convict’s hiding-place it is certain
in our first search none of us had meddled with it, or beyond doubt we
should have discovered him.
And now to end this strange yarn. Mr. Barlow found out that a seaman
named Mogg was at the wheel on the night Rolt jumped overboard. The
mate and I—indeed, all of us aft—were persuaded that whoever stood
at the wheel at that time was the convict’s confederate, because the
main-brace must have been dropped into the sea and belayed by some one,
who, standing near, could fling the rope overboard swiftly over the side
without being observed. Certainly the brace had not been long overboard
when the whistle sounded; Mr. Barlow or myself would have noticed it,
wondered at such an unusual piece of lubberliness, and ordered the thing
to be hauled in and coiled down.
However, that Mogg was Rolt’s confederate was made almost certain a
little later on when some of the crew came to Mr. Barlow and me to
say they had heard Mogg speak of Rolt as his cousin. He was put into
irons, but was dumb for a month, then, swearing that the memory of the
murders lay as heavy on his soul as though he had committed them, he
confessed that he had agreed with Rolt to help him to escape and hide
in the after part of the ship, of which he gave him a plan. They had
twenty different schemes. One had been this of the convict’s jumping
overboard when Mogg was at the wheel and the main-brace over the side.
The opportunity they awaited came with several marvellous conditions for
successful execution of the stratagem when the doctor on a breathless
night brought the prisoners up in batches to breathe. Mogg said he had
passed Rolt on his way to the wheel, and settled everything in a few
whispers, and the signal was to be a long, low whistle. It was then he
had given him the knife out of his sheath. The intention of the convict,
as we gathered from Mogg, was to kill all the officers but myself; I was
to be left to navigate the ship. He and Mogg reckoned that when the crew
and the soldiers found themselves without commanders they would become
demoralized, and allow the convicts to seize the ship. The seaman denied
that he had tampered with the falls of the starboard quarter-boat.
We handed Mogg over to the police on our arrival, and they sent him in a
ship sailing immediately to take his trial in England.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Phantom Death etc., by William Clark Russell