But, long before they imagined, they had been discovered, and their
purpose divined from the ship. Maru, the keen-eyed half-caste, who was
the first to notice their approach, knew from the manner in which the
canoes kept together that something unusual was about to occur, and
instantly called the captain. Glass in hand, the latter ascended the
main rigging for a dozen ratlins or so and looked at the advancing
flotilla. A very brief glance told him that the boy had good cause for
alarm--the natives intended to cut off the ship, and the captain, whom
Maru described as “an old man with a white head,” at once set about to
make such a defence as the critical state of affairs rendered possible.
Calling his men to him and giving them muskets, he posted two of them on
top of the deckhouse, and with the remainder of his poor force stationed
himself upon the poop. With a faint hope that they might yet be
intimidated from attacking, he fired a musket shot in the direction of
the leading boat. No notice was taken; so, descending to the main deck
with his men, he ran out one of the 6-pounders and fired it. The roar of
the heavily-charged gun was answered by a shrill yell of defiance from
two hundred throats.
“Then,” said Maru, “the captain go below and say good-bye to women and
girls, and shut and lock cabin door.”
Returning to the deck, the brave old man and his second mate and two men
picked up their muskets and began to fire at the black mass of boats and
men that were now well within range. As they fired, the boy Maru loaded
spare muskets for them as fast as his trembling hands would permit.
Once only, as the brigantine swung to the current, the captain brought
the gun on the port side to bear on them again, and fired; and again
there came back the same appalling yell of defiance, for the shower
of bullets only made a wide slat of foam a hundred yards short of the
leading boat.
By the time the gun was reloaded the brigantine had swung round head
to shore again; and then, as the despairing but courageous seamen were
trying to drag it forward again, Deschard and his savages in the leading
boat had gained the ship, and the wild figure of the all but naked
beachcomber sprang on deck, followed by his own crew and nearly two
hundred other fiends well-nigh as bloodthirsty and cruel as himself.
Some two or three of them had been killed by the musketry fire from the
ship, and their fellows needed no incentive from their white leaders to
slay and spare not.
Abandoning the gun, the captain and his three men and the boy Maru
succeeded in fighting their way through Deschard's savages and reaching
one of the cabin doors, which, situated under the break of the high
poop, opened to the main deck. Ere they could all gain the shelter of
the cabin and secure the door the second mate and one of the seamen were
cut down and ruthlessly slaughtered, and of the three that did, one--the
remaining seaman--was mortally wounded and dying fast.
Even at such a moment as this, hardened and merciless as were their
natures and blood-stained their past, it cannot be thought that had
Deschard and his co-pirates known that white women were on board the
brigantine they would have perpetrated their last dreadful deed. In his
recital of the final scene in the cabin Maru spoke of the white woman
and the two girls coming out of their state-room and kneeling down and
praying with their arms clasped around each other's waists. Surely the
sound of their dying prayers could never have been heard by Deschard
when, in the native tongue, he called out for one of the guns to be run
aft.
*****
“By and by,” said Maru, “woman and girl come to captain and sailor-man
Charlie and me and cry and say good-bye, and then captain he pray too.
Then he get up and take cutlass, and sailor-man Charlie he take cutlass
too, but he too weak and fall down; so captain say, 'Never mind,
Charlie, you and me die now like men.'”
Then, cutlass in hand, the white-haired old skipper stood over the
kneeling figures of the three women and waited for the end. And now the
silence was broken by a rumbling sound, and then came a rush of naked
feet along the deck.
“It is the gun,” said Maru to the captain, and in an agony of terror he
lifted up the hatch of the lazarette under the cabin table and jumped
below. And then Deschard's voice was heard.
“_Ta mai te ae_” (Give me the fire).
A blinding flash, a deafening roar, and splintering and crashing of
timber followed, and as the heavy pall of smoke lifted, Deschard and the
others looked in at their bloody work, shuddered, and turned away.
Pedro, the Portuguese, his dark features turned to a ghastly pallor, was
the only one of the four men who had courage enough to assist some of
the natives in removing from the cabin the bodies of the three poor
creatures who, but such a short time before, were full of happiness and
hope. Deschard and the three others, after that one shuddering glance,
had kept away from the vicinity of the shot-torn cabin.