Chapter Seven.Anxious days.Upon learning the news of the mutiny the ladies were, as might be expected, overwhelmed with consternation and dismay, feelings which were intensified when it was further intimated to them, through Ned, that Williams intended henceforward to take up his abode in the cabin, and that he should expect all the passengers to favour him with their company at meals, and, in fact, whensoever he might choose to join them. So impertinent a message naturally excited at the outset a great deal of indignation; but Mr Gaunt—who seemed to rise to the occasion, and who, immediately upon the occurrence of the crisis, instinctively assumed the direction of affairs—soon brought the little party to reason when they assembled in the saloon for a hurried conference, by pointing out to them that, for the present, at least, they were quite helpless, and that, therefore, instead of struggling against what was unavoidable, their best plan would be to humour the whims of the mutineers, so long, of course, as they were not too outrageous, and to quietly bide their time in the hope that an opportunity might present itself for turning the tables upon the crew. And he emphasised his proposition by so many convincing arguments that, when breakfast was announced by the steward, the entire party presented themselves at table, the ladies making such a successful effort to conceal their perturbation as to thoroughly astonish Williams when that worthy made his appearance and established himself at the head of the table.“Good-morning, ladies and gentlemen,” said he, making a not ungraceful bow as he seated himself. “Hope you all slept well.”“Thank you,” said Mr Gaunt; “yes, I believe we all enjoyed a fairly good night’s rest; thanks to our ignorance of what was going forward.”“Ah, yes,” answered Williams with a somewhat constrained laugh and an obviously embarrassed manner; “yes, we took the liberty of making a change or two for the better during the night.”“For the better?” repeated Gaunt. “Pray how can you demonstrate that the changes you have effected are for the better?”“Well, I’ll tell you,” answered Williams. “I’m glad you’ve asked, as it gives me an opportunity to explain the why and the wherefore of our acts, and to show you that we are not, after all, quite such villains as I daresay you now think us. First and foremost,” he continued, “I suppose I need not point out to gentlemen of your intelligence and experience that sailors—foremast men, that is to say—lead the hardest lives and are the worst paid for it of any set of men living?”“Well,” said Mr Gaunt, “without being prepared to go so far as that I am quite willing to admit that the life of a seaman is a hard one. But what has that to do with your mutiny? In the first place, I suppose you joined the ship voluntarily; and, in the next, it seems to me, from what I have seen, that you have been made as comfortable on board here as was possible under the circumstances. Your food has been good and sufficient, your quarters are dry, airy, and comfortable, and surely it would be difficult to find more considerate officers than Captain Blyth and his mates?”“All very true, so far as it goes,” answered Williams, “but wouldyoulike to be a seaman before the mast?”“No,” said Mr Gaunt, “I frankly admit I should not; otherwise, I suppose I should have been a seaman, and not a civil engineer. But the life was of your own choosing, I presume?”“Yes, it was, and I don’t complain of it,” said Williams. “The thing I complain of is, that, seeing what a life of hardship and peril ours is, we do not get paid a half nor a quarter enough. What would be the use of ships without sailors to man them? We are just as necessary to a ship as her captain; yet look at the difference in his pay and ours! I say it is not fair; it is rank injustice; sailors have just beenrobbedall these years, and the long and the short of it is that the crew of this ship means to get back part of what has been stolen from them by the dishonesty of shipowners.”“But, my good fellow,” exclaimed the engineer, “you are taking an altogether wrong view of the question. Admitting that you are as necessary to the ship as her captain, you entirely overlook the important fact thatonecaptain is sufficient for a ship, no matter how large she may be, whilstoneseaman alone is of very trifling value; hence the difference in the scale of pay.”It was clear enough from the expression of the mutineer’s face that this view of the question had never before been presented to him; he was completely “taken aback,” and for a minute or two could find absolutely nothing to say.“Well!” he exclaimed at last, “it is clear enough that it is no use for an ignorant man like me to try to argue with an educated gentleman like you; you are bound to go to wind’ard of me the very first tack, and I was a fool for attempting it. But there are other matters which, in my opinion, fully justify the step we have taken.”“The fellow maycallhimself an ignorant man, but his language is that of a person who has enjoyed at least some of the benefits of education,” thought Gaunt. But he merely said:“Indeed! May I ask what they are?”“Certainly. The question is just this. Why should I, and thousands like me, have to work and slave for a bare living, whilst there are others who never do a stroke of work in their whole lives and yet have houses, and land, and money, horses and carriages—in fact, all that heart can wish for? Is this fair, or right, or just?”“Assuredly it is,” was the reply, “and so, I think, you will admit, if you will give the matter a moment’s consideration. It is not your fault or mine that you and I do not occupy the enviable position in life to which you have just referred; it is the fault, if fault there be, of our ancestors. They did not happen to be money-getters, and therefore, if we wish to enjoy the advantages attendant upon the possession of a fortune, large or small, we must get the fortune for ourselves. Just look at the question for a moment from the millionaire’s point of view. If you happened to possess a fortune would you consider it fair or just that you should be called upon to divide it evenly with everybody worse off than yourself? For that, I fancy, is the idea you have in your mind.”This was another poser which Williams evidently found it wholly impossible to answer. He hung his head in deep and perplexed thought for some minutes, and at length said:“It is quite impossible for me to argue with you, as I said before; but the long and the short of it is this, we have made our plans, and we intend to carry them out, right or wrong. But you need have no apprehension for yourselves. We have no intention to prey upon private individuals; and though we shall be obliged to land you on some spot from which it will be impossible for you to escape, we will deliver up to you the whole of your private property, and also furnish you with means to protect yourselves and to preserve your lives, so far as we have the power.”And without waiting to discuss the question further, the mutineer rose from the table and beat a somewhat precipitate retreat.“Had you any hope of convincing the fellow?” asked the doctor, when the little party once more found themselves free to converse unreservedly.“No, I cannot say I had,” answered Gaunt; “but I thought I might so far shake his purpose as to make him hesitate about his future plans, and so give us a little more time in which to act. But it is evident enough that he has no wish to be convinced; if, therefore, we are to do anything we must make our arrangements speedily. Come on deck and have a smoke, old fellow.”The ladies had no fancy for being left alone just then; the entire party, therefore, children included, adjourned to the poop. Williams was then standing in the waist talking to the boatswain, to whom he appeared to be giving some instructions; but on observing the movements of the passengers he signed to Ned, who was standing near, to follow him, and hastily made his way into the saloon.“Bring me the captain’s charts,” he said, as soon as Ned joined him. The charts were produced; and after carefully looking them over Williams selected a track-chart of the world, which he carefully spread out on the table.“Now, show me whereabouts we are,” he said.Ned indicated the position of the ship by making a pencil dot on the paper, and a long period of anxious study on Williams’ part followed.“What is the course to the Straits of Sunda?” was the next question.Ned told him; whereupon Williams left the saloon, and a moment later was heard altering the course of the ship in accordance with Ned’s information. He then returned to the saloon, and unrolled a chart of the North Pacific, which he pored anxiously over for fully a quarter of an hour, finally huddling the charts all together in a heap, with the remark, “That will do for the present;” which Ned construed into a token of dismissal, and accordingly left the cabin.Day followed day with little or no variety, the weather continuing fine all the time, and at length theFlying Cloudarrived within a few days’ sail of the Straits of Sunda. Ned now spent on deck every moment he could possibly spare from sleep, as he was not without hopes that hereabout a man-of-war might be fallen in with; and he was resolved that, in such a case, it should go hard but he would make some effort to communicate to her the state of affairs on board.And, as a matter of fact, they actually did sight a frigate on the day upon which they entered the straits. But Williams was not to be caught napping; he too had evidently contemplated some such possibility, and had taken such precautions as not only rendered it impossible for anyone to make a private signal, but had also arranged such answers to the signals usually made on such occasions that the frigate was completely hoodwinked, and passed on her way without attempting to send a boat alongside.This was a terrible disappointment, not only to Ned but also to Gaunt and the doctor, each of them having confidently reckoned upon a certain deliverance in the event of a man-of-war being fallen in with.They now recognised that in Williams, whether educated or not, they had a man of no ordinary acuteness to deal with; they realised that, though apparently free as air to act as they pleased, an unceasing watch was being kept upon them, and they felt that henceforth they must not place any dependence upon the hope of help from without. They all, therefore, individually and collectively too, so far as they had opportunity, began to plot and scheme; in the hope of being able to hit upon some plan which might enable them to recover possession of the ship, going even to the perilous length of sounding the least unpromising of the crew in the hope of finding at least a few of them open to either persuasion or bribery. But it was all of no avail. The men proved not only unresponsive but suspicious; and they were also wholly unsuccessful in their efforts to communicate with Captain Blyth, of whom they could not get so much as a sight, much less speech with him.“It is of no use for us to try any further,” at last said Gaunt, when talking matters over with the doctor. “We have tried our best, but Williams is too acute and too strong for us. I have noticed a certain something in his manner within the last day or two which tells me that we are standing on very perilous ground, and we must drop the whole affair before worse comes of it. We must not forget that the women and children have only us to look to for protection in this awful strait; it will never do for us to attempt anything which might result in their being left to the tender mercies of those ruffians forward. The only thing we can now hope for is a speedy and safe deliverance from their clutches by being landed somewhere; and we must pray that they will be induced to land us on some spot where we may not only be able to make ourselves safe, but also to secure the means of living.”Meanwhile the ship passed safely through the Straits of Sunda, along the south coast of Borneo, and so into the Java and Flores Seas; Williams maintaining a ceaseless and anxious watch upon Ned as the lad daily pricked off upon the chart the position of the ship, and frequently altering the course with the evident object of inspecting certain islands, probably to ascertain whether they were suitable for landing his unwelcome guests upon. Several islands were visited, but none of them proved satisfactory. Some were found to be inhabited by savages, whose demonstrations at sight of the ship were so unmistakably hostile that it would have been obviously only murder thinly disguised to have landed any white person there, whilst others seemed deficient in the means of sustaining life. Wandering thus about the ocean a fortnight passed away, and Williams began to grow impatient; so much so indeed that he at length proposed landing the passengers on the next land seen, let it be what it would. But to this the crew would not agree: they were as yet young in crime, and were determined that, since the passengersmustbe got rid of, they should at least be given a fair chance. A compromise was at length come to, by which it was agreed that the search should be continued for three days longer, after which the unlucky passengers were to be landed on the first land seen, there to take their chance. This matter was decided at a council composed of the entire crew, on the evening of a day whereon no less than three islands had been fruitlessly visited; and at the close of the discussion Ned was summoned and the chart consulted. At Williams’ request the area already examined was pointed out, and then, after much discussion, a course of due east was decided upon, in order that a new tract of sea might be explored. On this course the chart showed a clear sea for something like three hundred miles ahead of them. Everybody was therefore much astonished when at daybreak next morning land was descried right ahead at a distance of only about ten miles.The discovery was of course first reported to Williams, who seemed greatly disconcerted by it.“Call Ned,” said he.Ned was duly summoned, and soon made his appearance on the topgallant-forecastle, upon which Williams had already established himself, and from which advantageous stand-point he was watching the approach of the ship to the land.“What do you call that?” demanded Williams, pointing ahead, as soon as he became conscious of Ned’s presence beside him.“Land—unmistakably land!” exclaimed Ned, shading his eyes with his hand to get a clearer view.“And do you know how far the ship has run during the night?” angrily demanded the mutineer.“Not far, I should think; perhaps fifty or sixty miles,” replied Ned, glancing aloft and away toward the horizon to note the appearance of sea and sky.“And did you not tell me only last night that we had a clear sea to the eastward of us for something like three hundred miles? Yet there is the land; and if it had happened to blow fresh during the night we should perhaps have run upon it before making it out in the dark. How do you account for your being so strangely out of your reckoning?” sternly asked Williams.“I am not out of my reckoning,” hotly retorted Ned; “and I cannot account for the appearance of that island except upon the supposition that this particular portion of the ocean has never yet been thoroughly examined, and that therefore the island ahead has never been observed and set down on the chart. One thing at all events is certain, and that is that, as I said last night, the chart shows a clear sea a long way ahead of us.”“Bring the chart to me, and let me have another look at it,” growled Williams.Ned produced the chart and spread it out on the deck, when Williams kneeled down and examined it for some time with very evident suspicion, not scrupling at last to hint pretty plainly his impression that Ned had deliberately intended to cast away the ship. Of course Ned indignantly repudiated any such intention, and at length apparently succeeded in partially reassuring Williams, who finally grumbled out; “Well, if what you say be true, the only conclusion we can come to is that yonder island has never yet been visited by civilised beings; and if that is the case it is all the more suitable a spot on which to land some of our useless live lumber. So go aft and tell the passengers to pack up their traps at once, as I am about to put them ashore. And tell the boatswain to open the after-hatch and to pass these people’s dunnage on deck all ready for sending ashore with them. I am quite tired of running about looking for a suitable spot for them, and will look no further. They will have to do the best they can yonder, savages or no savages.”Ned hurried aft to the poop, on which the little group of ladies and gentlemen was congregated, and delivered his message, adding:“I am very glad—in some respects—that you are going, for I may now tell you that unconsciously you have been in some sort acting as hostages for my good behaviour, and I have been dreadfully afraid that some involuntary slip on my part might complicate matters for you. When once you are all safely out of the ship I shall feel more at liberty to take a few risks, if I can see that any good is likely to arise therefrom. I was at first in hopes that Captain Blyth and young Manners would have been put on shore with you, in which case I would have joined you, even if I had had to swim for it; but I am afraid Williams—the scoundrel—intends to land them elsewhere, in which case I am sure it is my duty to stick to the ship so long as they remain on board. But, at all events, I will try to give you the latitude and longitude of the island before you leave us, for, if I mistake not, you, Mr Gaunt, can navigate?”“Yes,” said Gaunt, “I am a fairly good navigator, and not a bad seaman, in an amateurish sort of way, you know. But do not trouble about the position of the island. I have here,” producing his watch, “an excellent chronometer, showing Greenwich time, and books and instruments among my luggage which, with the aid of sun, moon, and stars, will enable me to obtain all the information I need. True, I have no charts; but I have a capital atlas, which will serve our turn, so far as finding our way from place to place is concerned. And now, Ned, whilst we have the opportunity, let me say that we all thoroughly understand the peculiar and difficult position in which you are placed on board here, and that we consider you have conducted yourself admirably and with remarkable discretion from the very commencement of this deplorable business of the mutiny. And if, as is by no means improbable, you should by and by find yourself involved by your involuntary association with these mutineers in a situation of difficulty or peril, we shall be most happy and willing to bear testimony to that effect, if we happen to be in a situation to do so. We shall of course endeavour to escape from our island prison; and should we succeed, our first act on reaching a civilised country will be to make to the authorities a full and detailed report of all the circumstances of the mutiny, so that a man-of-war may be sent out in quest of the ship. But I think it will be well foryouto do the same, for your own sake. You can perhaps manage it by writing an account of the transaction, sealing it up in a bottle, and throwing the bottle overboard when you happen to be in some well-frequented ship track; not forgetting to state in your report the position of the island on which we are landed, as well as that of the spot on which poor Captain Blyth and young Manners may be put on shore. And now, as we may not have another opportunity to say it, good-bye, my dear lad, remain honest and true to your duty, as you have been hitherto, and leave all the rest to God, who will not allow you to suffer for the faults of others. Good-bye, Ned, and God bless and guide and deliver you from all evil. Amen.”Gaunt then shook Ned heartily by the hand, after which the others stepped forward one by one and did the same, each saying a hopeful word or two to cheer and encourage him under the pang of parting, which it was evident enough the poor lad felt keenly. Sibylla hung back until all the others, the poor children included, had spoken their farewell, and then she too advanced and held out her hand. She was very pale, and the small shapely trembling hand which Ned grasped in his was icy cold; but however keenly she may have felt the parting under such terrible circumstances she contrived to maintain at least a semblance of outward composure, though there was a tremor in her voice which she found it quite impossible to control. She murmured a few low half-inarticulate words of farewell, gave Ned’s hand a slight involuntary pressure ere she released it, and then hastily retreated to her state-room.As for poor Ned, on releasing Sibylla’s hand he turned and staggered out of the cabin, looking like a man who had been suddenly struck a numbing blow, and feeling as he might have felt had the saloon been a felon’s dock in which he had just received his death-sentence. This miserable parting, though he had been constantly expecting it any time within the previous fortnight, and though he honestly believed—as he had said—that he was glad of it, now seemed to have come upon him with startling suddenness, and it had called up with it an unexpected feeling of bitter anguish for which he was wholly unprepared, and for which he found it difficult to account. It was not, he thought, that he had conceived for these people an exceptionally warm friendship; he had made many friends during his sea-going career for whom he had felt quite as strong a regard, yet when the time for it came he had been able to say farewell with a cheery voice and a comparatively light heart. But now it seemed altogether a different matter; though the sun still shone brilliantly, as of old, and the warm soft wind still roughened the sapphire sea and caused it to laugh and sparkle as joyously as ever, the whole world looked dark, cheerless, and gloomy to him, and he felt as though he had suddenly become the victim of some terrible calamity. In the endeavour to get rid of the horrible feeling of depression which had thus unaccountably seized upon him, Ned went and hunted up the boatswain, and delivered Williams’ order respecting the removal of the passengers’ baggage from the hold; after which he mounted the poop, on which Williams had by this time stationed himself. But, actuated by the new and peculiar feeling which was just then so strongly asserting itself within his breast, the lad could think only of the mysterious island ahead, and of those who were so soon to be landed upon it; and his imagination, powerfully stimulated as it just then was, already pictured the little party abandoned there, and reduced to the most primitive state of self-dependence, given over to battle for their very existence as best they might: houseless, exposed to a thousand perils, and destitute of even the commonest necessaries of life until such could be provided by their own exertions. There was one—and only one—grain of comfort to brighten the gloomy prospect as it presented itself to Ned’s mental vision, which was that Mr Gaunt seemed to be a man of infinite resource; one of those extremely rare individuals who can never be taken wholly by surprise, and who no sooner find themselves confronted by a difficulty than they are ready with a remedy for it. The doctor, too, though a singularly quiet and unassuming man, struck Ned as one who, his work once fairly cut out for him, would go manfully through with it. But what could two men, however resolute, do in the position they would soon occupy, unless well provided with arms, ammunition, and tools? And, determined to let slip no opportunity to help those in whom he was so strongly interested, the lad turned to Williams and said:“As I suppose you do not intend to turn these people adrift without arms, or the tools with which to construct for themselves some sort of a shelter, would it not be well to look up a few things for them at once, so that the ship may not be detained in a position of danger when the landing takes place?”“Arms! tools!” growled Williams. “Who spoke of supplying them with either?”“Nobody,” answered Ned; “but you cannot surely be thinking of putting them ashore without them?”“Now, supposing that you had the management of this job,” snarled Williams, “what would you give them?”“Well,” said Ned, “I should let them have one of those spare topsails out of the sail-room; a couple of rifles apiece, including the women, with plenty of ammunition, two or three axes, a hammer or two, and a few bags of nails.”“Oh! you would, eh?” sneered Williams. “And what use do you suppose all those things would be to them?”“The sail,” said Ned, “would serve them for a tent until they could build a house, the tools would enable them to build the house, and the arms would give them a chance to defend themselves if attacked, as well as to provide themselves with food.”“Well, yes, that’s true,” answered Williams, rather reluctantly. “Very well,” he continued, “go and rout the things out; and let me see them when you have got them together.”Without waiting to give the fellow a chance to change his mind, Ned hurried off, and summoning the boatswain and his gang to his assistance, soon had the topsail on deck; after which he procured the keys of the arm-chest and selected not ten but a dozen rifles, fitted with bayonets, a goodly stock of ammunition, three new axes with helves complete, a couple of shovels, two hammers, half a dozen bags of nails, mostly large, a coil of inch rope, an adze, and a quantity of tinware—as less liable to breakage than crockery. And, as a suitable finish to the whole, he topped off with a case which he routed out from the lazarette, and which bore on its side the legend “assorted tinned meats.”Breakfast was by this time ready; and on its being announced, Williams ordered Ned to take charge of the deck, and, in the event of anything noteworthy occurring, to report to him at once. Ned was by no means sorry to be thus left to himself for a short time; but, fully alive to the exceptional nature of the responsibility laid upon him at that particular moment, deemed his proper position just then to be in the fore-top. And, first procuring his telescope, thither he quickly made his way.The ship was by this time within about five miles of the land; and the first thing the lad noticed, on reaching his more elevated post, was that the sea was breaking heavily all along the shore. Hailing the boatswain, who was on deck, Ned instructed that functionary to report this circumstance to Williams, who, in consequence, soon made his appearance on deck again.“Fore-top, there!” he hailed; “how far are the breakers off the shore?”“About a mile, I should say,” answered Ned.“Do they look too heavy for a boat to go through them?” was the next inquiry.“Yes,” answered Ned; “there is nothing but white water all along this side of the island.”“Very well,” said Williams, “stay where you are, and keep your eyes peeled; we must try the lee side of the island, that’s all. Lay aft here, my lads, and man the lee braces. Down with your helm, there, you sir, and let her come by the wind. Brace sharp up, my bullies; we mustn’t leave the hooker’s bones on yon island if we can help it. Well, there! belay all! How is that, Ned; shall we weather the southernmost point, think ye?”“Yes,” answered Ned, “and plenty to spare, if there is no current to set us to leeward.”The island was now to leeward of the ship, stretching along the horizon on her larboard beam, the northern extremity being well on her quarter, whilst the southern end, with an outlying reef, lay about three points on her lee-bow. Anxious to see and learn as much as possible of the place which was to be the—possibly life-long—abode of those who had suddenly seemed so dear to him, Ned again had recourse to his telescope, with which he forthwith proceeded to carefully scan the island.It measured, from north to south, about six miles, as nearly as the lad could estimate it; what its measurement might be in the other direction it was not then possible to say. The land was very high, especially toward the centre of the island; and one of the first things which attracted Ned’s attention was a remarkable cliff, apparently quite perpendicular, which traversed the island from north to south, seemingly about four hundred feet high, and which sprang sheer out of the ridge of a lofty hill which appeared to form the back-bone, as it were, of the island. This cliff seemed to Ned to divide the island into two distinct parts; for it terminated, both to north and to south, in a terrific precipice falling sheer down to the sea, which foamed and chafed at its base. This gave the island a most peculiar appearance, suggesting the idea that at some distant period of the world’s history a mighty convulsion had occurred, rending the rocks violently asunder and forcing a portion of them—namely, that which formed the land in sight—far above the level of the rest. To the eastward, or landward of the remarkable cliff already referred to, Ned could see the steep conical summit of a lofty mountain, apparently about four miles inland; but the cliff was too high to allow of his seeing any other portion of the island beyond it. The land was covered with wood from the base of the cliff clear down to the inner margin of the beach, and, with the aid of his glass, Ned could detect the feathery fronds of cocoanut and other palms, as well as the less lofty foliage of the useful banana. Meanwhile, the ship had by this time reached a point which enabled the lad to make out that the long line of breakers which had first attracted his attention inclosed a bay about a mile wide and nearly that depth, the water of which was quite smooth and unbroken inside the inner line of breakers. And whilst examining this bay, with the idea that a knowledge of it might be useful to his friends, Ned’s eye was arrested by an object on the inner edge of the reef, and almost in smooth water, which a more careful inspection showed him to be a wreck. This discovery he determined not to report, but to communicate, if possible, to the little party before they were landed. And, to make more certain of being able to do so, he there and then tore a leaf out of his pocket-book and jotted down a few notes respecting his observations, which he thought they might be glad to have.At length the ship handsomely weathered the most southerly extremity of the island, this proving to be a bold projection in a vertical cliff, the summit of which towered in some places to a height of nearly sixteen hundred feet above the sea. This cliff extended along the whole southern seaboard of the island, towering highest at the point where it met the curious transverse cliff before mentioned, and gradually becoming lower as it neared the eastern end of the island, which now showed itself to be about eleven miles in length from east to west. With the exception of the mountain, the conical top of which Ned had seen over the summit of the transverse cliff, that cliff seemed to be the highest part of the island; though the rest of it was also hilly, gradually sloping, however, to the eastward until it terminated in a beautiful white sandy beach, on which Ned soon saw that a landing might be effected without difficulty.As soon as Ned had piloted the ship into a position where she might be hove-to with safety, Williams called him down on deck, on reaching which he was summoned aft.“Now then!” exclaimed Williams, “let’s give this cargo” - pointing to Ned’s collection of miscellaneous articles for the passengers’ benefit—“an overhaul. You seem quite determined that they shall not want for much, by the look of it.”“Of course not; why should they?” demanded Ned. “They are not going on shore to please themselves, but to please you; and it is only right that they should be supplied with everything necessary to make themselves thoroughly comfortable. They ought not to be allowed to want foranything.”Williams admitted that there was some truth in that argument; and, after inquiring what uses certain of the articles were expected to be put to, ordered the boat to be lowered and manned, and everything to be passed down into her. When this came to be done, however, there proved to be, with the luggage, too much for one boat; so, rather than incur the delay which would be entailed by the making of a second trip, Williams, with many expressions of dissatisfaction and impatience, ordered the second quarter-boat to be lowered.At length everything was pronounced to be in the boats; and nothing remained but for the passengers themselves to pass down over the side. They had, previously to this, asked and been refused permission to say farewell to Captain Blyth, there was therefore nothing further to detain them, and Mr Gaunt now advanced to the gangway, where he paused for a moment in order to protest formally against being thus landed in a part of the world from which there seemed little or no hope of their being able to effect their escape. The protest was, of course, utterly ineffectual, as they quite expected it would be—indeed it was only made because they wished it to be clearly understood by all hands that they were not leaving the ship of their own free-will—and when the engineer had finished speaking, all that Williams said in reply was:“That is all right. And now, as there is a fairish amount of swell running, I would recommend you two gentlemen to go down into the boat first, so as to help the ladies and children down, and to see that none of them fall overboard.”This was such sound advice that the engineer at once followed it, Ned at the same time pressing forward, and, under cover of a pretence of wishing to shake hands with him for the last time, slipped into his hand the pencil note he had prepared. The transfer was effected unobserved; and the doctor next stepping forward, soon found himself safely in the boat beside his friend. The children were next carefully handed down by Ned; after which, at a sign from Williams, first Mrs Gaunt and then Mrs Henderson followed. There now remained only Sibylla to complete the party; and she was in the act of advancing to the gangway, when—to the unspeakable dismay of those most concerned—Williams, who was standing on the rail, gave the order for both boats to shove off, at the same moment leaping down off the rail on deck. His extraordinary order must have been anticipated, so promptly was it obeyed; and before even Gaunt could recover from his momentary surprise, the boats were fifty yards away from the ship and heading for the shore, whilst the cries of the hapless deserted girl rang fearfully out over the water after them.The feeling of dismay naturally excited in the breasts of the unfortunate passengers by this singular episode was of the briefest possible duration, and was immediately succeeded by one of vexed astonishment, that by what seemed like a cruel and inexcusably careless oversight, a sensitive girl should have been subjected to even the most temporary alarm; and whilst Mrs Henderson started to her feet with clasped hands and wide-open startled eyes, Gaunt laid his hand on the tiller, and jammed it hard over, as he exclaimed authoritatively:“Back water, the starboard oars! pull, the port! round with her, men! You have left Miss Stanhope behind!”The men, looking surprisedly at each other, proceeded to obey the order, upon which the new second-mate, who was in charge of the boat, started to his feet, and prefacing the inquiry with an oath, demanded:“Now then, you sodgers, what are you about? Who commands this here boat? Give way, you swabs, and bend your backs to it, too, or there’ll be trouble for some of you when you gets back to the ship. It’s all right, sir,” he continued, addressing Gaunt; “the young lady is to stay where she is. It was all arranged by Williams and a few more of us about half an hour ago, whilst you was all busy packing up your traps in the cabin. The fact is like this here: None of us foremast hands understands anything about navigation, so we’ve been obliged to press young Ned into the sarvice; and we knows as how his heart ain’t in the job, and Williams sort of suspects that he’d play us a scurvy trick if he dared. As long as you was with us he was all right, because, d’ye see, Williams told him that if he played us false you’d be made to suffer for it; but it suddenly struck him just now that when you was all put ashore where should we be? So he and two or three more of us had a palaver together, and the long and the short of it is that we decided to keep the young woman with us as a ‘hostage,’ Williams calls it, whereby we shall keep the whip hand of the lad, as you may say. So all her dunnage was passed down into the after-hold again on the quiet, and if there’s anything of hers in either of the boats we’ve got to take it back aboard again. And Williams’ very last orders was that I was to be sure to tell you that you wasn’t to worry about the young lady, because we’ve all agreed that she shall be treated as a passenger with the greatest possible respect, and not be interfered with by anybody.”“Oh, my poor sister—my poor lost sister!” moaned Mrs Henderson, burying her face in her hands as she burst into a passion of hysterical tears; and whilst Mrs Gaunt did her best to soothe and comfort her unfortunate friend, Doctor Henderson and the engineer sought by every means in their power to induce the boat’s crew to return to the ship and give them an opportunity to try their persuasive powers on Williams, with the object of obtaining Miss Stanhope’s release. Their efforts proved utterly vain, the men positively refusing to go back; but hope was not entirely abandoned nor their efforts suspended until they had landed, and the boats were fairly out of ear-shot on their way back to the ship.
Upon learning the news of the mutiny the ladies were, as might be expected, overwhelmed with consternation and dismay, feelings which were intensified when it was further intimated to them, through Ned, that Williams intended henceforward to take up his abode in the cabin, and that he should expect all the passengers to favour him with their company at meals, and, in fact, whensoever he might choose to join them. So impertinent a message naturally excited at the outset a great deal of indignation; but Mr Gaunt—who seemed to rise to the occasion, and who, immediately upon the occurrence of the crisis, instinctively assumed the direction of affairs—soon brought the little party to reason when they assembled in the saloon for a hurried conference, by pointing out to them that, for the present, at least, they were quite helpless, and that, therefore, instead of struggling against what was unavoidable, their best plan would be to humour the whims of the mutineers, so long, of course, as they were not too outrageous, and to quietly bide their time in the hope that an opportunity might present itself for turning the tables upon the crew. And he emphasised his proposition by so many convincing arguments that, when breakfast was announced by the steward, the entire party presented themselves at table, the ladies making such a successful effort to conceal their perturbation as to thoroughly astonish Williams when that worthy made his appearance and established himself at the head of the table.
“Good-morning, ladies and gentlemen,” said he, making a not ungraceful bow as he seated himself. “Hope you all slept well.”
“Thank you,” said Mr Gaunt; “yes, I believe we all enjoyed a fairly good night’s rest; thanks to our ignorance of what was going forward.”
“Ah, yes,” answered Williams with a somewhat constrained laugh and an obviously embarrassed manner; “yes, we took the liberty of making a change or two for the better during the night.”
“For the better?” repeated Gaunt. “Pray how can you demonstrate that the changes you have effected are for the better?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” answered Williams. “I’m glad you’ve asked, as it gives me an opportunity to explain the why and the wherefore of our acts, and to show you that we are not, after all, quite such villains as I daresay you now think us. First and foremost,” he continued, “I suppose I need not point out to gentlemen of your intelligence and experience that sailors—foremast men, that is to say—lead the hardest lives and are the worst paid for it of any set of men living?”
“Well,” said Mr Gaunt, “without being prepared to go so far as that I am quite willing to admit that the life of a seaman is a hard one. But what has that to do with your mutiny? In the first place, I suppose you joined the ship voluntarily; and, in the next, it seems to me, from what I have seen, that you have been made as comfortable on board here as was possible under the circumstances. Your food has been good and sufficient, your quarters are dry, airy, and comfortable, and surely it would be difficult to find more considerate officers than Captain Blyth and his mates?”
“All very true, so far as it goes,” answered Williams, “but wouldyoulike to be a seaman before the mast?”
“No,” said Mr Gaunt, “I frankly admit I should not; otherwise, I suppose I should have been a seaman, and not a civil engineer. But the life was of your own choosing, I presume?”
“Yes, it was, and I don’t complain of it,” said Williams. “The thing I complain of is, that, seeing what a life of hardship and peril ours is, we do not get paid a half nor a quarter enough. What would be the use of ships without sailors to man them? We are just as necessary to a ship as her captain; yet look at the difference in his pay and ours! I say it is not fair; it is rank injustice; sailors have just beenrobbedall these years, and the long and the short of it is that the crew of this ship means to get back part of what has been stolen from them by the dishonesty of shipowners.”
“But, my good fellow,” exclaimed the engineer, “you are taking an altogether wrong view of the question. Admitting that you are as necessary to the ship as her captain, you entirely overlook the important fact thatonecaptain is sufficient for a ship, no matter how large she may be, whilstoneseaman alone is of very trifling value; hence the difference in the scale of pay.”
It was clear enough from the expression of the mutineer’s face that this view of the question had never before been presented to him; he was completely “taken aback,” and for a minute or two could find absolutely nothing to say.
“Well!” he exclaimed at last, “it is clear enough that it is no use for an ignorant man like me to try to argue with an educated gentleman like you; you are bound to go to wind’ard of me the very first tack, and I was a fool for attempting it. But there are other matters which, in my opinion, fully justify the step we have taken.”
“The fellow maycallhimself an ignorant man, but his language is that of a person who has enjoyed at least some of the benefits of education,” thought Gaunt. But he merely said:
“Indeed! May I ask what they are?”
“Certainly. The question is just this. Why should I, and thousands like me, have to work and slave for a bare living, whilst there are others who never do a stroke of work in their whole lives and yet have houses, and land, and money, horses and carriages—in fact, all that heart can wish for? Is this fair, or right, or just?”
“Assuredly it is,” was the reply, “and so, I think, you will admit, if you will give the matter a moment’s consideration. It is not your fault or mine that you and I do not occupy the enviable position in life to which you have just referred; it is the fault, if fault there be, of our ancestors. They did not happen to be money-getters, and therefore, if we wish to enjoy the advantages attendant upon the possession of a fortune, large or small, we must get the fortune for ourselves. Just look at the question for a moment from the millionaire’s point of view. If you happened to possess a fortune would you consider it fair or just that you should be called upon to divide it evenly with everybody worse off than yourself? For that, I fancy, is the idea you have in your mind.”
This was another poser which Williams evidently found it wholly impossible to answer. He hung his head in deep and perplexed thought for some minutes, and at length said:
“It is quite impossible for me to argue with you, as I said before; but the long and the short of it is this, we have made our plans, and we intend to carry them out, right or wrong. But you need have no apprehension for yourselves. We have no intention to prey upon private individuals; and though we shall be obliged to land you on some spot from which it will be impossible for you to escape, we will deliver up to you the whole of your private property, and also furnish you with means to protect yourselves and to preserve your lives, so far as we have the power.”
And without waiting to discuss the question further, the mutineer rose from the table and beat a somewhat precipitate retreat.
“Had you any hope of convincing the fellow?” asked the doctor, when the little party once more found themselves free to converse unreservedly.
“No, I cannot say I had,” answered Gaunt; “but I thought I might so far shake his purpose as to make him hesitate about his future plans, and so give us a little more time in which to act. But it is evident enough that he has no wish to be convinced; if, therefore, we are to do anything we must make our arrangements speedily. Come on deck and have a smoke, old fellow.”
The ladies had no fancy for being left alone just then; the entire party, therefore, children included, adjourned to the poop. Williams was then standing in the waist talking to the boatswain, to whom he appeared to be giving some instructions; but on observing the movements of the passengers he signed to Ned, who was standing near, to follow him, and hastily made his way into the saloon.
“Bring me the captain’s charts,” he said, as soon as Ned joined him. The charts were produced; and after carefully looking them over Williams selected a track-chart of the world, which he carefully spread out on the table.
“Now, show me whereabouts we are,” he said.
Ned indicated the position of the ship by making a pencil dot on the paper, and a long period of anxious study on Williams’ part followed.
“What is the course to the Straits of Sunda?” was the next question.
Ned told him; whereupon Williams left the saloon, and a moment later was heard altering the course of the ship in accordance with Ned’s information. He then returned to the saloon, and unrolled a chart of the North Pacific, which he pored anxiously over for fully a quarter of an hour, finally huddling the charts all together in a heap, with the remark, “That will do for the present;” which Ned construed into a token of dismissal, and accordingly left the cabin.
Day followed day with little or no variety, the weather continuing fine all the time, and at length theFlying Cloudarrived within a few days’ sail of the Straits of Sunda. Ned now spent on deck every moment he could possibly spare from sleep, as he was not without hopes that hereabout a man-of-war might be fallen in with; and he was resolved that, in such a case, it should go hard but he would make some effort to communicate to her the state of affairs on board.
And, as a matter of fact, they actually did sight a frigate on the day upon which they entered the straits. But Williams was not to be caught napping; he too had evidently contemplated some such possibility, and had taken such precautions as not only rendered it impossible for anyone to make a private signal, but had also arranged such answers to the signals usually made on such occasions that the frigate was completely hoodwinked, and passed on her way without attempting to send a boat alongside.
This was a terrible disappointment, not only to Ned but also to Gaunt and the doctor, each of them having confidently reckoned upon a certain deliverance in the event of a man-of-war being fallen in with.
They now recognised that in Williams, whether educated or not, they had a man of no ordinary acuteness to deal with; they realised that, though apparently free as air to act as they pleased, an unceasing watch was being kept upon them, and they felt that henceforth they must not place any dependence upon the hope of help from without. They all, therefore, individually and collectively too, so far as they had opportunity, began to plot and scheme; in the hope of being able to hit upon some plan which might enable them to recover possession of the ship, going even to the perilous length of sounding the least unpromising of the crew in the hope of finding at least a few of them open to either persuasion or bribery. But it was all of no avail. The men proved not only unresponsive but suspicious; and they were also wholly unsuccessful in their efforts to communicate with Captain Blyth, of whom they could not get so much as a sight, much less speech with him.
“It is of no use for us to try any further,” at last said Gaunt, when talking matters over with the doctor. “We have tried our best, but Williams is too acute and too strong for us. I have noticed a certain something in his manner within the last day or two which tells me that we are standing on very perilous ground, and we must drop the whole affair before worse comes of it. We must not forget that the women and children have only us to look to for protection in this awful strait; it will never do for us to attempt anything which might result in their being left to the tender mercies of those ruffians forward. The only thing we can now hope for is a speedy and safe deliverance from their clutches by being landed somewhere; and we must pray that they will be induced to land us on some spot where we may not only be able to make ourselves safe, but also to secure the means of living.”
Meanwhile the ship passed safely through the Straits of Sunda, along the south coast of Borneo, and so into the Java and Flores Seas; Williams maintaining a ceaseless and anxious watch upon Ned as the lad daily pricked off upon the chart the position of the ship, and frequently altering the course with the evident object of inspecting certain islands, probably to ascertain whether they were suitable for landing his unwelcome guests upon. Several islands were visited, but none of them proved satisfactory. Some were found to be inhabited by savages, whose demonstrations at sight of the ship were so unmistakably hostile that it would have been obviously only murder thinly disguised to have landed any white person there, whilst others seemed deficient in the means of sustaining life. Wandering thus about the ocean a fortnight passed away, and Williams began to grow impatient; so much so indeed that he at length proposed landing the passengers on the next land seen, let it be what it would. But to this the crew would not agree: they were as yet young in crime, and were determined that, since the passengersmustbe got rid of, they should at least be given a fair chance. A compromise was at length come to, by which it was agreed that the search should be continued for three days longer, after which the unlucky passengers were to be landed on the first land seen, there to take their chance. This matter was decided at a council composed of the entire crew, on the evening of a day whereon no less than three islands had been fruitlessly visited; and at the close of the discussion Ned was summoned and the chart consulted. At Williams’ request the area already examined was pointed out, and then, after much discussion, a course of due east was decided upon, in order that a new tract of sea might be explored. On this course the chart showed a clear sea for something like three hundred miles ahead of them. Everybody was therefore much astonished when at daybreak next morning land was descried right ahead at a distance of only about ten miles.
The discovery was of course first reported to Williams, who seemed greatly disconcerted by it.
“Call Ned,” said he.
Ned was duly summoned, and soon made his appearance on the topgallant-forecastle, upon which Williams had already established himself, and from which advantageous stand-point he was watching the approach of the ship to the land.
“What do you call that?” demanded Williams, pointing ahead, as soon as he became conscious of Ned’s presence beside him.
“Land—unmistakably land!” exclaimed Ned, shading his eyes with his hand to get a clearer view.
“And do you know how far the ship has run during the night?” angrily demanded the mutineer.
“Not far, I should think; perhaps fifty or sixty miles,” replied Ned, glancing aloft and away toward the horizon to note the appearance of sea and sky.
“And did you not tell me only last night that we had a clear sea to the eastward of us for something like three hundred miles? Yet there is the land; and if it had happened to blow fresh during the night we should perhaps have run upon it before making it out in the dark. How do you account for your being so strangely out of your reckoning?” sternly asked Williams.
“I am not out of my reckoning,” hotly retorted Ned; “and I cannot account for the appearance of that island except upon the supposition that this particular portion of the ocean has never yet been thoroughly examined, and that therefore the island ahead has never been observed and set down on the chart. One thing at all events is certain, and that is that, as I said last night, the chart shows a clear sea a long way ahead of us.”
“Bring the chart to me, and let me have another look at it,” growled Williams.
Ned produced the chart and spread it out on the deck, when Williams kneeled down and examined it for some time with very evident suspicion, not scrupling at last to hint pretty plainly his impression that Ned had deliberately intended to cast away the ship. Of course Ned indignantly repudiated any such intention, and at length apparently succeeded in partially reassuring Williams, who finally grumbled out; “Well, if what you say be true, the only conclusion we can come to is that yonder island has never yet been visited by civilised beings; and if that is the case it is all the more suitable a spot on which to land some of our useless live lumber. So go aft and tell the passengers to pack up their traps at once, as I am about to put them ashore. And tell the boatswain to open the after-hatch and to pass these people’s dunnage on deck all ready for sending ashore with them. I am quite tired of running about looking for a suitable spot for them, and will look no further. They will have to do the best they can yonder, savages or no savages.”
Ned hurried aft to the poop, on which the little group of ladies and gentlemen was congregated, and delivered his message, adding:
“I am very glad—in some respects—that you are going, for I may now tell you that unconsciously you have been in some sort acting as hostages for my good behaviour, and I have been dreadfully afraid that some involuntary slip on my part might complicate matters for you. When once you are all safely out of the ship I shall feel more at liberty to take a few risks, if I can see that any good is likely to arise therefrom. I was at first in hopes that Captain Blyth and young Manners would have been put on shore with you, in which case I would have joined you, even if I had had to swim for it; but I am afraid Williams—the scoundrel—intends to land them elsewhere, in which case I am sure it is my duty to stick to the ship so long as they remain on board. But, at all events, I will try to give you the latitude and longitude of the island before you leave us, for, if I mistake not, you, Mr Gaunt, can navigate?”
“Yes,” said Gaunt, “I am a fairly good navigator, and not a bad seaman, in an amateurish sort of way, you know. But do not trouble about the position of the island. I have here,” producing his watch, “an excellent chronometer, showing Greenwich time, and books and instruments among my luggage which, with the aid of sun, moon, and stars, will enable me to obtain all the information I need. True, I have no charts; but I have a capital atlas, which will serve our turn, so far as finding our way from place to place is concerned. And now, Ned, whilst we have the opportunity, let me say that we all thoroughly understand the peculiar and difficult position in which you are placed on board here, and that we consider you have conducted yourself admirably and with remarkable discretion from the very commencement of this deplorable business of the mutiny. And if, as is by no means improbable, you should by and by find yourself involved by your involuntary association with these mutineers in a situation of difficulty or peril, we shall be most happy and willing to bear testimony to that effect, if we happen to be in a situation to do so. We shall of course endeavour to escape from our island prison; and should we succeed, our first act on reaching a civilised country will be to make to the authorities a full and detailed report of all the circumstances of the mutiny, so that a man-of-war may be sent out in quest of the ship. But I think it will be well foryouto do the same, for your own sake. You can perhaps manage it by writing an account of the transaction, sealing it up in a bottle, and throwing the bottle overboard when you happen to be in some well-frequented ship track; not forgetting to state in your report the position of the island on which we are landed, as well as that of the spot on which poor Captain Blyth and young Manners may be put on shore. And now, as we may not have another opportunity to say it, good-bye, my dear lad, remain honest and true to your duty, as you have been hitherto, and leave all the rest to God, who will not allow you to suffer for the faults of others. Good-bye, Ned, and God bless and guide and deliver you from all evil. Amen.”
Gaunt then shook Ned heartily by the hand, after which the others stepped forward one by one and did the same, each saying a hopeful word or two to cheer and encourage him under the pang of parting, which it was evident enough the poor lad felt keenly. Sibylla hung back until all the others, the poor children included, had spoken their farewell, and then she too advanced and held out her hand. She was very pale, and the small shapely trembling hand which Ned grasped in his was icy cold; but however keenly she may have felt the parting under such terrible circumstances she contrived to maintain at least a semblance of outward composure, though there was a tremor in her voice which she found it quite impossible to control. She murmured a few low half-inarticulate words of farewell, gave Ned’s hand a slight involuntary pressure ere she released it, and then hastily retreated to her state-room.
As for poor Ned, on releasing Sibylla’s hand he turned and staggered out of the cabin, looking like a man who had been suddenly struck a numbing blow, and feeling as he might have felt had the saloon been a felon’s dock in which he had just received his death-sentence. This miserable parting, though he had been constantly expecting it any time within the previous fortnight, and though he honestly believed—as he had said—that he was glad of it, now seemed to have come upon him with startling suddenness, and it had called up with it an unexpected feeling of bitter anguish for which he was wholly unprepared, and for which he found it difficult to account. It was not, he thought, that he had conceived for these people an exceptionally warm friendship; he had made many friends during his sea-going career for whom he had felt quite as strong a regard, yet when the time for it came he had been able to say farewell with a cheery voice and a comparatively light heart. But now it seemed altogether a different matter; though the sun still shone brilliantly, as of old, and the warm soft wind still roughened the sapphire sea and caused it to laugh and sparkle as joyously as ever, the whole world looked dark, cheerless, and gloomy to him, and he felt as though he had suddenly become the victim of some terrible calamity. In the endeavour to get rid of the horrible feeling of depression which had thus unaccountably seized upon him, Ned went and hunted up the boatswain, and delivered Williams’ order respecting the removal of the passengers’ baggage from the hold; after which he mounted the poop, on which Williams had by this time stationed himself. But, actuated by the new and peculiar feeling which was just then so strongly asserting itself within his breast, the lad could think only of the mysterious island ahead, and of those who were so soon to be landed upon it; and his imagination, powerfully stimulated as it just then was, already pictured the little party abandoned there, and reduced to the most primitive state of self-dependence, given over to battle for their very existence as best they might: houseless, exposed to a thousand perils, and destitute of even the commonest necessaries of life until such could be provided by their own exertions. There was one—and only one—grain of comfort to brighten the gloomy prospect as it presented itself to Ned’s mental vision, which was that Mr Gaunt seemed to be a man of infinite resource; one of those extremely rare individuals who can never be taken wholly by surprise, and who no sooner find themselves confronted by a difficulty than they are ready with a remedy for it. The doctor, too, though a singularly quiet and unassuming man, struck Ned as one who, his work once fairly cut out for him, would go manfully through with it. But what could two men, however resolute, do in the position they would soon occupy, unless well provided with arms, ammunition, and tools? And, determined to let slip no opportunity to help those in whom he was so strongly interested, the lad turned to Williams and said:
“As I suppose you do not intend to turn these people adrift without arms, or the tools with which to construct for themselves some sort of a shelter, would it not be well to look up a few things for them at once, so that the ship may not be detained in a position of danger when the landing takes place?”
“Arms! tools!” growled Williams. “Who spoke of supplying them with either?”
“Nobody,” answered Ned; “but you cannot surely be thinking of putting them ashore without them?”
“Now, supposing that you had the management of this job,” snarled Williams, “what would you give them?”
“Well,” said Ned, “I should let them have one of those spare topsails out of the sail-room; a couple of rifles apiece, including the women, with plenty of ammunition, two or three axes, a hammer or two, and a few bags of nails.”
“Oh! you would, eh?” sneered Williams. “And what use do you suppose all those things would be to them?”
“The sail,” said Ned, “would serve them for a tent until they could build a house, the tools would enable them to build the house, and the arms would give them a chance to defend themselves if attacked, as well as to provide themselves with food.”
“Well, yes, that’s true,” answered Williams, rather reluctantly. “Very well,” he continued, “go and rout the things out; and let me see them when you have got them together.”
Without waiting to give the fellow a chance to change his mind, Ned hurried off, and summoning the boatswain and his gang to his assistance, soon had the topsail on deck; after which he procured the keys of the arm-chest and selected not ten but a dozen rifles, fitted with bayonets, a goodly stock of ammunition, three new axes with helves complete, a couple of shovels, two hammers, half a dozen bags of nails, mostly large, a coil of inch rope, an adze, and a quantity of tinware—as less liable to breakage than crockery. And, as a suitable finish to the whole, he topped off with a case which he routed out from the lazarette, and which bore on its side the legend “assorted tinned meats.”
Breakfast was by this time ready; and on its being announced, Williams ordered Ned to take charge of the deck, and, in the event of anything noteworthy occurring, to report to him at once. Ned was by no means sorry to be thus left to himself for a short time; but, fully alive to the exceptional nature of the responsibility laid upon him at that particular moment, deemed his proper position just then to be in the fore-top. And, first procuring his telescope, thither he quickly made his way.
The ship was by this time within about five miles of the land; and the first thing the lad noticed, on reaching his more elevated post, was that the sea was breaking heavily all along the shore. Hailing the boatswain, who was on deck, Ned instructed that functionary to report this circumstance to Williams, who, in consequence, soon made his appearance on deck again.
“Fore-top, there!” he hailed; “how far are the breakers off the shore?”
“About a mile, I should say,” answered Ned.
“Do they look too heavy for a boat to go through them?” was the next inquiry.
“Yes,” answered Ned; “there is nothing but white water all along this side of the island.”
“Very well,” said Williams, “stay where you are, and keep your eyes peeled; we must try the lee side of the island, that’s all. Lay aft here, my lads, and man the lee braces. Down with your helm, there, you sir, and let her come by the wind. Brace sharp up, my bullies; we mustn’t leave the hooker’s bones on yon island if we can help it. Well, there! belay all! How is that, Ned; shall we weather the southernmost point, think ye?”
“Yes,” answered Ned, “and plenty to spare, if there is no current to set us to leeward.”
The island was now to leeward of the ship, stretching along the horizon on her larboard beam, the northern extremity being well on her quarter, whilst the southern end, with an outlying reef, lay about three points on her lee-bow. Anxious to see and learn as much as possible of the place which was to be the—possibly life-long—abode of those who had suddenly seemed so dear to him, Ned again had recourse to his telescope, with which he forthwith proceeded to carefully scan the island.
It measured, from north to south, about six miles, as nearly as the lad could estimate it; what its measurement might be in the other direction it was not then possible to say. The land was very high, especially toward the centre of the island; and one of the first things which attracted Ned’s attention was a remarkable cliff, apparently quite perpendicular, which traversed the island from north to south, seemingly about four hundred feet high, and which sprang sheer out of the ridge of a lofty hill which appeared to form the back-bone, as it were, of the island. This cliff seemed to Ned to divide the island into two distinct parts; for it terminated, both to north and to south, in a terrific precipice falling sheer down to the sea, which foamed and chafed at its base. This gave the island a most peculiar appearance, suggesting the idea that at some distant period of the world’s history a mighty convulsion had occurred, rending the rocks violently asunder and forcing a portion of them—namely, that which formed the land in sight—far above the level of the rest. To the eastward, or landward of the remarkable cliff already referred to, Ned could see the steep conical summit of a lofty mountain, apparently about four miles inland; but the cliff was too high to allow of his seeing any other portion of the island beyond it. The land was covered with wood from the base of the cliff clear down to the inner margin of the beach, and, with the aid of his glass, Ned could detect the feathery fronds of cocoanut and other palms, as well as the less lofty foliage of the useful banana. Meanwhile, the ship had by this time reached a point which enabled the lad to make out that the long line of breakers which had first attracted his attention inclosed a bay about a mile wide and nearly that depth, the water of which was quite smooth and unbroken inside the inner line of breakers. And whilst examining this bay, with the idea that a knowledge of it might be useful to his friends, Ned’s eye was arrested by an object on the inner edge of the reef, and almost in smooth water, which a more careful inspection showed him to be a wreck. This discovery he determined not to report, but to communicate, if possible, to the little party before they were landed. And, to make more certain of being able to do so, he there and then tore a leaf out of his pocket-book and jotted down a few notes respecting his observations, which he thought they might be glad to have.
At length the ship handsomely weathered the most southerly extremity of the island, this proving to be a bold projection in a vertical cliff, the summit of which towered in some places to a height of nearly sixteen hundred feet above the sea. This cliff extended along the whole southern seaboard of the island, towering highest at the point where it met the curious transverse cliff before mentioned, and gradually becoming lower as it neared the eastern end of the island, which now showed itself to be about eleven miles in length from east to west. With the exception of the mountain, the conical top of which Ned had seen over the summit of the transverse cliff, that cliff seemed to be the highest part of the island; though the rest of it was also hilly, gradually sloping, however, to the eastward until it terminated in a beautiful white sandy beach, on which Ned soon saw that a landing might be effected without difficulty.
As soon as Ned had piloted the ship into a position where she might be hove-to with safety, Williams called him down on deck, on reaching which he was summoned aft.
“Now then!” exclaimed Williams, “let’s give this cargo” - pointing to Ned’s collection of miscellaneous articles for the passengers’ benefit—“an overhaul. You seem quite determined that they shall not want for much, by the look of it.”
“Of course not; why should they?” demanded Ned. “They are not going on shore to please themselves, but to please you; and it is only right that they should be supplied with everything necessary to make themselves thoroughly comfortable. They ought not to be allowed to want foranything.”
Williams admitted that there was some truth in that argument; and, after inquiring what uses certain of the articles were expected to be put to, ordered the boat to be lowered and manned, and everything to be passed down into her. When this came to be done, however, there proved to be, with the luggage, too much for one boat; so, rather than incur the delay which would be entailed by the making of a second trip, Williams, with many expressions of dissatisfaction and impatience, ordered the second quarter-boat to be lowered.
At length everything was pronounced to be in the boats; and nothing remained but for the passengers themselves to pass down over the side. They had, previously to this, asked and been refused permission to say farewell to Captain Blyth, there was therefore nothing further to detain them, and Mr Gaunt now advanced to the gangway, where he paused for a moment in order to protest formally against being thus landed in a part of the world from which there seemed little or no hope of their being able to effect their escape. The protest was, of course, utterly ineffectual, as they quite expected it would be—indeed it was only made because they wished it to be clearly understood by all hands that they were not leaving the ship of their own free-will—and when the engineer had finished speaking, all that Williams said in reply was:
“That is all right. And now, as there is a fairish amount of swell running, I would recommend you two gentlemen to go down into the boat first, so as to help the ladies and children down, and to see that none of them fall overboard.”
This was such sound advice that the engineer at once followed it, Ned at the same time pressing forward, and, under cover of a pretence of wishing to shake hands with him for the last time, slipped into his hand the pencil note he had prepared. The transfer was effected unobserved; and the doctor next stepping forward, soon found himself safely in the boat beside his friend. The children were next carefully handed down by Ned; after which, at a sign from Williams, first Mrs Gaunt and then Mrs Henderson followed. There now remained only Sibylla to complete the party; and she was in the act of advancing to the gangway, when—to the unspeakable dismay of those most concerned—Williams, who was standing on the rail, gave the order for both boats to shove off, at the same moment leaping down off the rail on deck. His extraordinary order must have been anticipated, so promptly was it obeyed; and before even Gaunt could recover from his momentary surprise, the boats were fifty yards away from the ship and heading for the shore, whilst the cries of the hapless deserted girl rang fearfully out over the water after them.
The feeling of dismay naturally excited in the breasts of the unfortunate passengers by this singular episode was of the briefest possible duration, and was immediately succeeded by one of vexed astonishment, that by what seemed like a cruel and inexcusably careless oversight, a sensitive girl should have been subjected to even the most temporary alarm; and whilst Mrs Henderson started to her feet with clasped hands and wide-open startled eyes, Gaunt laid his hand on the tiller, and jammed it hard over, as he exclaimed authoritatively:
“Back water, the starboard oars! pull, the port! round with her, men! You have left Miss Stanhope behind!”
The men, looking surprisedly at each other, proceeded to obey the order, upon which the new second-mate, who was in charge of the boat, started to his feet, and prefacing the inquiry with an oath, demanded:
“Now then, you sodgers, what are you about? Who commands this here boat? Give way, you swabs, and bend your backs to it, too, or there’ll be trouble for some of you when you gets back to the ship. It’s all right, sir,” he continued, addressing Gaunt; “the young lady is to stay where she is. It was all arranged by Williams and a few more of us about half an hour ago, whilst you was all busy packing up your traps in the cabin. The fact is like this here: None of us foremast hands understands anything about navigation, so we’ve been obliged to press young Ned into the sarvice; and we knows as how his heart ain’t in the job, and Williams sort of suspects that he’d play us a scurvy trick if he dared. As long as you was with us he was all right, because, d’ye see, Williams told him that if he played us false you’d be made to suffer for it; but it suddenly struck him just now that when you was all put ashore where should we be? So he and two or three more of us had a palaver together, and the long and the short of it is that we decided to keep the young woman with us as a ‘hostage,’ Williams calls it, whereby we shall keep the whip hand of the lad, as you may say. So all her dunnage was passed down into the after-hold again on the quiet, and if there’s anything of hers in either of the boats we’ve got to take it back aboard again. And Williams’ very last orders was that I was to be sure to tell you that you wasn’t to worry about the young lady, because we’ve all agreed that she shall be treated as a passenger with the greatest possible respect, and not be interfered with by anybody.”
“Oh, my poor sister—my poor lost sister!” moaned Mrs Henderson, burying her face in her hands as she burst into a passion of hysterical tears; and whilst Mrs Gaunt did her best to soothe and comfort her unfortunate friend, Doctor Henderson and the engineer sought by every means in their power to induce the boat’s crew to return to the ship and give them an opportunity to try their persuasive powers on Williams, with the object of obtaining Miss Stanhope’s release. Their efforts proved utterly vain, the men positively refusing to go back; but hope was not entirely abandoned nor their efforts suspended until they had landed, and the boats were fairly out of ear-shot on their way back to the ship.
Chapter Eight.Sibylla the hostage.Sibylla no sooner heard Williams’ order for the boats to shove off than she intuitively divined the horrible fate in store for her; and, resolved to effect her escape at any and every hazard, she darted toward the gangway, determined to fling herself into the sea rather than be left alone and unprotected in the midst of that gang of lawless men. But Williams was too quick for her; he saw her movement, anticipated her intention, and, leaping down off the rail, flung his arms around her, exclaiming:“Avast there, my pretty one; you are to stay with us! Nay, it is no use to struggle; you will not be allowed to go, so you may as well submit quietly to your fate. Curse the girl—how she fights! Stand still, will you, and listen to me! The boats are already a hundred fathoms away from the ship; there are half a dozen sharks cruising round us—I saw them not five minutes ago; and if you were silly enough to jump overboard, as you seem inclined to do, you would be torn to pieces before we could even think about picking you up.”“Better that than to remain here at the mercy of such wretches as you!” gasped Sibylla, still struggling feebly, for her strength was almost exhausted.“Well said, my beauty,” laughed Williams; “you are a rare plucky one, and no mistake. I like to see—”“Hands off, Williams!” exclaimed Ned, as he stepped coldly forward to the rescue. “What do you mean, sir, by such dastardly conduct? Do you call this keeping faith with me?”“Yes, of course I do,” exclaimed Williams. “I don’t want to hurt her if she’ll only keep quiet. Here, Ned, you take charge of her. She’ll be quieter with you than with me, perhaps; and see if you can persuade her that she will be better off here than overboard among the sharks. As to keeping faith with you, my hearty, why, I’ve done the best I could. Those friends of yours, that you seem to have taken such a tremendous fancy to, have been treated just as well since we took the ship as they were before. We’ve lost nearly three weeks cruising about trying to find a good place on which to land them—and a perfect paradise of a spot we’ve found for them at last; nobody could wish for a better—and, now that they are turned adrift, I’ve landed them with an outfit complete enough for them to start a regular colony. What more would you have! Haven’t I yet done enough to satisfy you?”“No, certainly not,” answered Ned, inwardly grieving now that he had not ventured to add to the scanty “outfit” several other articles which he had felt would have been of the utmost value to the marooned party, but which he had feared to include lest the whole should have been refused them. “No; this young lady was one of the party, and was included in my stipulations. Yet you have detained her on board here, a prisoner.”“Ah, well! the less said about that, perhaps, the better,” remarked Williams. “I quite intended to have landed her with the rest of them; but that island looming up ahead this morning—when you told us only last night that we had a clear sea ahead of us—looked so queer that we held a consultation, and came to the conclusion that, for our own safety’s sake, we ought to keep somebody aboard here to act as a sort of hostage to secure us against treachery on your part; and, as we didn’t think it would be right to separate husband and wife, or parents and children, why, you see, there was only this young lady left for us. And, whilst we are talking upon this subject, shipmates,” he continued, turning to the rest of the crew, whose curiosity had brought them about the little party, “let me say, here and now, that Bill Rogers, Bob Martin, and myself agreed this morning that she must be kept among us for the safety of the ship and all hands. You all know—for no secret has been made of it—that Ned, there, has been kept with us, not of his own free-will, but because we required somebody to navigate the ship for us. And you know, too, or I know, that the lad has just that amount of spirit in him that he wouldn’t hesitate to cast away the ship and all hands—himself included—or to play us any other awkward trick if he saw a chance of spoiling our plans for the recovery of a few of the good things that we’ve been defrauded out of. Now, so long as this young girl is all safe and sound we have nothing to fear from his treachery, because, d’ye see, I’m going to tell him and her—as I do now—that any act, or even suspicion, of treachery onhispart will be followed by the young woman being turned adrift by herself in the dinghy; and, rather than see her come to harm, he will be faithful to us, and carry out our orders to the best of his ability. But if evil comes to her we shall lose our hold upon him at once—I say all this before him because I’ve studied him and know him, and I want him to understand as much—and it has, therefore, been agreed that any man who interferes with the young lady will be shot at once and on the spot. So, now, mates, as you’ve had the whole affair explained to you, it is to be hoped you’ll shape your behaviour accordingly.”“Stop a moment!” exclaimed Ned, as Williams waved his hand by way of dismissal to his little audience, “it seems, from what Williams has said, that Miss Stanhope has been detained a prisoner solely on my account. If that be really the case, I wish to say that, if you will release her and put her on shore with her friends on the island yonder, I swear to you that, though I will never take part in any piracies or other unlawful acts which you may commit, I will in every other respect be absolutely faithful to you, and will navigate the ship whithersoever you will, to the best of my ability. This is no light sacrifice for a young man in my position to make; yet I will make it cheerfully, and take any oath of fidelity you may choose to impose upon me.”“It is no use, Ned; we can’t—we dare not do it,” answered Williams. “You mean what you say—now—I don’t doubt; but if you ever had a chance to betray us, as you may have, you wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation. No; the matter has been fully talked over, and the young lady must stay.”Ned was about to make a further effort on Sibylla’s behalf, but the girl herself stopped him.“Humble yourself no more to these men!” she said; “it will be of no avail, I can clearly see. And trouble not yourself on my behalf. God is able to protect me even here; His will be done!”She turned away, and Ned, offering his arm, half led, half supported Sibylla into the cabin; and, as he poured out and offered her a glass of wine from a decanter which stood in one of the swinging trays over the table, he exclaimed:“Oh! Miss Stanhope, what can I say, or how express the sorrow and regret I feel at the knowledge that it is through me you are placed in this terrible position. Believe me—”“Say no more, Mr Damerell, I entreat you,” interrupted Sibylla. “I know that you have no cause for self-reproach; we are both equally unfortunate. For, if I am detained on board this ship a prisoner, so are you; your prospects in life are as completely blighted as mine. And I have at least the comfort of that man’s assurance—in which I believe he was quite sincere—that I shall be treated with consideration and respect. Indeed, terrible as must be my position here, I am by no means sure that I am not safer where I am than is my poor sister on that lonely island. What may be her fate and that of those who are with her who can tell? to what dangers and privations will not they be exposed? It is terrible only to think of it. And now let me thank you for your noble and self-sacrificing efforts just now on my behalf. Come what will, I shall never forget them, nor shall I ever forget that you have proved yourself our true and staunch friend, forgetting yourself and all your own trouble and peril in your anxiety to help and befriend us. Tell me, do you think there is any possibility of our ever being able to make our escape from these dreadful people?”“Well,” said Ned, “I should not like to raise hopes which may never be fulfilled, but I think thereisjust a possibility of it. You must not build too much on what I say, because it would be idle to deny that our future is beset with difficulties and perils. The absence of your brother-in-law, the doctor, and Mr Gaunt is an irreparable loss to us, to say nothing of that of the captain and young Manners, both of whom will, I feel sure, be landed somewhere within the next few days. But do not despair; perhaps, when Williams has rid himself of them, his vigilance may relax. I should, under any circumstances, have tried to escape, and you may rest assured that, as your deliverance seems now to depend almost wholly upon me, my thoughts will more than ever be given to the project. What you have to do is to think as little as may be upon your present situation and to keep up your spirits. A chancemaycome to us at any moment—and I believe itwillcome, sooner or later. We must therefore be on the watch and hold ourselves ready to take advantage of it when it comes. The accidents—if I may call them so—of the sea are countless; we shall, by and by, be constantly hovering in the regular track of other ships, and that, in spite of all their vigilance, may afford us an opportunity to make our situation known. Or we may be captured; for, if the rascals carry out their present plans, it will not be long before we shall have all the men-of-war in these seas after us. Or we may, perhaps, be able to effect our escape in a boat. That gig of ours, in which our friends have been sent ashore is a splendid boat; and if we could get away in her whilst in some well-beaten ship track, with a good stock of provisions, we might well hope to be picked up in the course of a few days. That, however, I should only propose as a last resource. But the more I think of it the less hopeless do our prospects appear; so keep a good heart, Miss Stanhope, and hope for the best. By the by, do you know how to use a pistol?”“Yes,” said Sibylla, “I know how to use a revolver. Duncan has—or had—a pair; and when we were at home he taught Rose and me how to fire them, putting up a target in the garden for us to shoot at. Why do you ask?”“Because—although I think there is not much ground for apprehension—it will do no harm if you have a weapon upon which you can lay your hand in case of need. I have a pair of small revolvers which, though they are not very formidable weapons for long-distance shooting, are tolerably effective at close quarters, say within thirty yards or so. I will give you them—they are in a case, with cartridges and so on all complete; and I should like you to keep them always loaded and handy. And now, if you feel sufficiently composed to be left alone, I think I will go out on deck again and see how matters are progressing there.”When Ned reached the poop, to which he naturally directed his steps, he found Williams there, fuming at the protracted absence of the boats, which could clearly be seen, with their noses hauled up on the sandy beach, and the two boat-keepers sitting in lazy attitudes on their gunwales, quietly smoking. That the remainder of the crews were not delayed by assisting the marooned passengers to “shake down” was evidenced by the fact that the latter could be seen grouped together on a little grassy knoll, the ladies and children seated upon boxes, whilst the two men were vigorously attacking with their axes a couple of young straight-stemmed palms at no great distance.“What can the rascals be about?” growled Williams impatiently. “I’ll bet anything they are off skylarking in the woods, instead of hurrying back to the ship, as they ought. For’ard, there! pass the word for the boatswain to clear away one of those signal-guns. We’ll give them a shot by way of a reminder to quicken their motions.”The gun was cleared away, loaded, and fired—not once but nearly a dozen times before the laggards appeared. They were seen at last, however, hurrying down to the beach, in little straggling groups, one after the other, and finally the boats pushed off and headed for the ship.A quarter of an hour later they were alongside; and in another moment the two men who had been sent away in charge stood on the quarter-deck, confronting their angry chief.“Come, Rogers I come, Martin! what the mischief have you been about, keeping us dodging in the offing all this while?” demanded Williams fiercely. “Hook on the tackles, and let us be off,” he continued.“Wait a minute, cap’n,” answered Rogers; “we’ve a bit of news for you that I expect you won’t particularly relish. One of the men has cut and run; and it was hunting for him that kept us ashore so long.”“Who is if!” demanded Williams.“Why, it’s Tom Nicholls, one of the steerage passengers that Blyth shipped after we fell in with that barque on her beam-ends.”“So he has bolted, has he, the white-livered hound!” ejaculated Williams furiously. “Well, he shall not escape us. Take your boats’ crews, both of you; give each man a rifle and half a dozen rounds of ball cartridge, and pull ashore again and hunt the cur until you find him, and bring him aboard here to me, dead or alive! I’ll anchor the ship and wait for you, if it takes you a week to do the job.”“Ay, ay, we’ll get him before the day is over, never fear!” exclaimed Rogers, apparently in high glee at receiving the brutal order. “Come along, mates, and get your rifles; it isn’t every day that we get the chance of such a spree as a man-hunt!”The boats’ crews had, during this short colloquy, scrambled up the ship’s side to the deck, and had gathered round the speakers, curious to see how Williams would receive the news of the loss; and it was to these that Rogers had addressed himself.They did not, however, appear to by any means enter into the spirit of the thing, hanging back so coldly unresponsive to the mate’s jovial invitation that the latter paused in blank astonishment.“Why—why—what the—” began Rogers, when he was brusquely interrupted by one of the men, who stepped forward and said:“Get somebody else to go in my place, matey. I don’t understand man-huntin’, as you calls it, and should only make a poor fist at it, I’m afraid.”“Same here,” said another. “I never done anything of the sort yet, and don’t know how to set about it.”The others were expressing themselves to the same effect, when Williams darted forward, and, seizing the first speaker roughly by the collar, savagely demanded:“Look here, you scoundrel, do you mean to say that youwon’tgo?”“Ay, ay, shipmate, that’s just exactly what Idomean,” was the answer, given good-naturedly enough. “But take your hand off my collar,” the man continued more sternly. “Two can play at that game, you know; and I doubt whether you are man enough to thrash me.”Williams, white as death with passion, prudently withdrew his hand from the man’s collar, and stepped back a pace or two.“What does this mean?” he demanded. “Are you going to mutiny, men, before our cruise has even commenced?”An insolent laugh greeted this inquiry; and the man who had just spoken answered:“Call it what you like, Cap’n Josh; mutiny is as good a name for it as any other, I reckon. And what I mean is, that I, for one, ain’t goin’ ashore on no man-huntin’ expedition. There was nothing said about man-huntin’ when the articles for this here cruise was drawed up; and what I say is, if Tom Nicholls wants to cut and run, let him do it.”“Ay, ay; so says I,” added another of the men. “He never entered into the thing with no spirit, anyhow; and if he’d rather be ashore there than makin’ his fortune aboard here with us, why, let him stay ashore, says I. ‘No manhuntin’’ is my sentiments.”Several of the other men now declared themselves to the same effect, whereupon Williams, finding himself in the minority, said, with as perfect an assumption of indifference as he could command at the moment:“Very well, lads; just as you please. It was of you, not of myself, that I was thinking. The work will be so much the heavier for you if Nicholls is allowed to escape; but, if you do not mind it, I am sure I need not. If, as you say, the fool prefers slaving ashore there for a bare living to making his fortune with us afloat, let him go. Up with the boats, and be smart about it! Up with your helm, abaft there, and let her go off square before the wind! Square the main-yard; and away aloft there, some of you, and rig out the topmast and topgallant-studding-sail booms!”These orders were rapidly obeyed. The ship squared away before a freshening breeze; and two hours later the island was left so far astern that a landsman might easily have mistaken it for a grey cloud on the edge of the horizon.The ship was kept running to the eastward all that day under studding-sails, and by sunset had travelled a distance of nearly seventy miles. At that hour, however, Ned requested that sail might be shortened and the ship allowed to go along under easy canvas during the night, urging the experience of the morning as a reason for caution whilst navigating that comparatively unknown sea. Williams at once assented to the suggestion, remarking immediately afterwards to Rogers, with a self-satisfied chuckle:“That was a rare good move of ours, Bill, to keep the young woman aboard. See how cautious Mr Ned has grown all of a sudden! You may take my word for it, there will be no more tumbling over islands so long as she remains aboard of us.”As it happened, it was just as well that the precaution was taken; for at midnight, just as the watch was being relieved, breakers were discovered ahead, and the ship was only brought to the wind just barely in time to avert a disaster. But even then the craft was by no means out of danger; for, when an attempt was made to claw off from the reefs to leeward, it was soon discovered that the vessel was embayed, other reefs being found to exist both to the northward and to the southward of her. For a few minutes something very like a panic took possession of the mutineers; but Williams proved himself equal to the occasion, stilling the tumult by a few brief authoritative words, and promptly ordering a man into the chains with the lead. Soundings were taken and a sandy bottom found, with just the right depth of water for anchoring. So the cable was roused on deck and bent on to the best bower, the ship making short reaches to the northward and southward meanwhile; and as soon as everything was ready a position was taken as nearly as possible midway between the reefs, and the anchor let go in twelve fathoms of water, with sixty fathoms of chain outside the hawse-pipe. The canvas was securely furled, the watch set, with one man told off to tend the lead-line which was dropped over the side to show whether the anchor held securely or not, and then nothing remained for them but to wait, with what patience they could muster, for daybreak.This was a somewhat trying ordeal; for the night was pitch dark—the moon being new and not a star visible, the sky overcast, and the wind fresh and at times gusty. Moreover, they could form but a very vague idea of the dangers by which they were surrounded, the chart showing nothing but a clear sea; and, to further increase their anxiety, there was a heavy ground-swell rolling in from the westward, which caused the ship to bury herself to her hawse-pipes. Altogether, what with the uncertainty of their position, the inky darkness, and the ominous roar of the breakers all round them, it was a very anxious time for everybody on board theFlying Cloud.At length, after what seemed an eternity of darkness, the harassed watchers caught the first faint signs of returning day. The forms of the clouds became dimly perceptible along the horizon to the eastward; then the cloud-bank itself broke up, revealing little patches here and there of soft violet-tinted sky, which rapidly paled, first to a pure and delicate ultramarine, and then to a soft primrose hue before the approaching dawn. The leaden-tinted clouds imperceptibly assumed a purple hue, then their lower edges became fringed with gold; and presently a long shaft of white light shot from the horizon half-way to the zenith, tinging the higher clouds—now broken up into a crowded archipelago of aerial islets—with flakes of “celestial rosy red,” and in another moment the golden upper rim of the sun’s disk flashed on the horizon, sending a long path of shimmering radiance across the bosom of the heaving, restless sea; and it was day.The awkward character of the predicament in which the ship was involved now became sufficiently apparent. To the eastward and astern of her a small island, measuring about two miles from north to south, was seen. Its shores were indented and rocky, the surf beating upon them with great violence; and between it and the ship, at a distance nowhere greater than a mile, there lay an extensive crescent-shaped reef, almost completely encircling the unfortunate craft. The swell, rolling heavily in from the westward, hurled itself with appalling fury upon this reef, the far-reaching expanse of white water revealing distinctly the extremity of the peril through which the ship had passed during the previous night. Indeed, it was difficult to understand how she had escaped at all, for the opening between the two horns of the reef was so narrow that he would have been a bold navigator who would willingly have risked the passage, even in broad daylight.Williams’ first act was to summon Rogers and Martin, in whose company he paid a visit to the fore-topmast cross-trees, where the trio devoted a full half-hour to a careful and critical examination of the ship’s position. Fortunately there was no occasion for haste, the anchor maintaining a firm grip of the ground, notwithstanding the occasional heavy plunges of the ship when some exceptionally big roller came sweeping in unbroken through the narrow channel in the reef. It was possible, therefore, for the mutineers to weigh well the advisability of the steps they contemplated, and to act with due caution. The cross-trees afforded a clear and thoroughly comprehensive view of the entire reef; and from this lofty stand-point the position of the ship was seen to be much less critical than it had appeared to be when viewed from the deck below. TheFlying Cloudwas, in fact, found to be lying in about the centre of a natural harbour. True, it was rather a wild berth for a ship, especially in the particular spot which she then occupied—this spot happening to be exactly opposite the opening in the reef and fully exposed to the unbroken run of the sea—but it was seen that by moving her half a cable’s-length either to the north or south the craft would be sheltered by one of the arms of the reef, and, with a couple of anchors down, might hope to ride out a moderately heavy gale in safety.This was all very well, and very satisfactory—so far as it went—for it relieved their minds of all anxiety respecting the immediate safety of the ship. But, safe as she might be for the moment, the spot was not one in which a prudent mariner would linger one unnecessary instant; and Williams’ only anxiety just then was how to get out.The channel into this natural harbour trended as nearly as possible due east and west; and, with the wind as it then stood, the ship, in order to get to sea, would have to make a series of short tacks to windward. But the opening was so narrow and tortuous that the little party in the cross-trees considered it exceedingly doubtful whether this would be possible with so lengthy a ship as theFlying Cloud; and, for the moment, it looked very much as though they would have to remain where they were until a change of wind should occur to release them.At length, however, an expedition in the gig to the mouth of the channel was decided upon, and Ned—who had already distinguished himself by the exhibition of an altogether exceptional aptitude and dexterity in his handling of the ship—was instructed to join the party. The boat was soon lowered and manned, and, with Williams, Rogers, and Ned in the stern-sheets, pulled away towards the entrance. They had had the precaution to provide themselves with a hand-lead; and as soon as the channel was reached a very complete set of soundings, from end to end and over its entire width, was taken under Ned’s supervision. The result was unexpectedly satisfactory, no detached rocks being found in the fairway, whilst a tolerably even depth of water, nowhere less than five fathoms, and extending right up alongside the edge of the reef, prevailed throughout the entire length of the channel.The progress of this survey was watched with the utmost anxiety by Williams—who, indeed, actually took the soundings with his own hands; and upon its completion he was so intensely gratified at the way in which this important service had been executed that he actually went the length of stammering out a few half-intelligible words of thanks to Ned.The only question now remaining for settlement was, whether it would be prudent to make the attempt to work the ship out to sea. All hands were most keenly anxious to get clear of the place, for, safe as the ship just then undoubtedly was, they knew that it might prove a death-trap to them if it came on to blow heavily from the westward; but they also had the sense to know that a single mistake or miscalculation on the part of the person working the ship would send her on to the reef, a hopeless wreck.Rogers and the boat’s crew were unanimously of opinion that the project was an impossibility; Williams expressed his belief that the thingmightbe done, but he at the same time frankly confessed that he had not faith enough in himself to undertake the responsibility. Ned prudently kept his opinion to himself until he was directly appealed to, when he modestly said that, with a smart hand at the wheel, a keen look-out aloft to warn him of the presence of any sunken rocks which might perchance have escaped their search, and a lively crew at the sheets and braces, he believed he would be able to work the ship into open water.“Then,” exclaimed Williams with an oath, “you shall try your hand at the job. But remember,” he added, “if the ship touches anywhere, though it be only lightly enough to just graze the paint off her bottom, you may look out for squalls!”“Now, look here, Williams,” answered Ned hotly, “if you want me to do my best for you, you had better be somewhat more sparing with your threats; and unless you withdraw what you have just said I shall decline to have anything to do with this matter. The task you have asked me to undertake is a most difficult and delicate one. I am quite willing to do my best, if you see fit to intrust me with the care of the ship, but it is a case in which even so slight a matter as a temporary flaw in the wind may bring about a very serious accident. If, therefore, I am to make the attempt, it must be with the distinct understanding that I am not to be held responsible for anything which may happen.”“What d’ye think, mates? dare we trust him?” asked Williams, appealing to Rogers and the other men in the boat.They said they thought that Ned’s objection was quite fair and reasonable; and Rogers, unceremoniously changing places with Ned, whispered something in Williams’ ear, whereupon the latter said:“Very well. Will you swear, Ned, to honestly do your best to get the ship out of the fix she is now in, and to navigate her safely into open water?”“Certainly I will, if you wish it,” answered Ned, “but a little reflection would convince you, I think, that I must be as little anxious as any of you to be cast away in such an unpromising spot as this.”“All right, then,” said Williams; “we’ll chance it. Give way, men, for the ship.”A quarter of an hour later all hands were once more on board, the boat was hoisted up to the davits, and the word was passed to man the windlass and heave short.
Sibylla no sooner heard Williams’ order for the boats to shove off than she intuitively divined the horrible fate in store for her; and, resolved to effect her escape at any and every hazard, she darted toward the gangway, determined to fling herself into the sea rather than be left alone and unprotected in the midst of that gang of lawless men. But Williams was too quick for her; he saw her movement, anticipated her intention, and, leaping down off the rail, flung his arms around her, exclaiming:
“Avast there, my pretty one; you are to stay with us! Nay, it is no use to struggle; you will not be allowed to go, so you may as well submit quietly to your fate. Curse the girl—how she fights! Stand still, will you, and listen to me! The boats are already a hundred fathoms away from the ship; there are half a dozen sharks cruising round us—I saw them not five minutes ago; and if you were silly enough to jump overboard, as you seem inclined to do, you would be torn to pieces before we could even think about picking you up.”
“Better that than to remain here at the mercy of such wretches as you!” gasped Sibylla, still struggling feebly, for her strength was almost exhausted.
“Well said, my beauty,” laughed Williams; “you are a rare plucky one, and no mistake. I like to see—”
“Hands off, Williams!” exclaimed Ned, as he stepped coldly forward to the rescue. “What do you mean, sir, by such dastardly conduct? Do you call this keeping faith with me?”
“Yes, of course I do,” exclaimed Williams. “I don’t want to hurt her if she’ll only keep quiet. Here, Ned, you take charge of her. She’ll be quieter with you than with me, perhaps; and see if you can persuade her that she will be better off here than overboard among the sharks. As to keeping faith with you, my hearty, why, I’ve done the best I could. Those friends of yours, that you seem to have taken such a tremendous fancy to, have been treated just as well since we took the ship as they were before. We’ve lost nearly three weeks cruising about trying to find a good place on which to land them—and a perfect paradise of a spot we’ve found for them at last; nobody could wish for a better—and, now that they are turned adrift, I’ve landed them with an outfit complete enough for them to start a regular colony. What more would you have! Haven’t I yet done enough to satisfy you?”
“No, certainly not,” answered Ned, inwardly grieving now that he had not ventured to add to the scanty “outfit” several other articles which he had felt would have been of the utmost value to the marooned party, but which he had feared to include lest the whole should have been refused them. “No; this young lady was one of the party, and was included in my stipulations. Yet you have detained her on board here, a prisoner.”
“Ah, well! the less said about that, perhaps, the better,” remarked Williams. “I quite intended to have landed her with the rest of them; but that island looming up ahead this morning—when you told us only last night that we had a clear sea ahead of us—looked so queer that we held a consultation, and came to the conclusion that, for our own safety’s sake, we ought to keep somebody aboard here to act as a sort of hostage to secure us against treachery on your part; and, as we didn’t think it would be right to separate husband and wife, or parents and children, why, you see, there was only this young lady left for us. And, whilst we are talking upon this subject, shipmates,” he continued, turning to the rest of the crew, whose curiosity had brought them about the little party, “let me say, here and now, that Bill Rogers, Bob Martin, and myself agreed this morning that she must be kept among us for the safety of the ship and all hands. You all know—for no secret has been made of it—that Ned, there, has been kept with us, not of his own free-will, but because we required somebody to navigate the ship for us. And you know, too, or I know, that the lad has just that amount of spirit in him that he wouldn’t hesitate to cast away the ship and all hands—himself included—or to play us any other awkward trick if he saw a chance of spoiling our plans for the recovery of a few of the good things that we’ve been defrauded out of. Now, so long as this young girl is all safe and sound we have nothing to fear from his treachery, because, d’ye see, I’m going to tell him and her—as I do now—that any act, or even suspicion, of treachery onhispart will be followed by the young woman being turned adrift by herself in the dinghy; and, rather than see her come to harm, he will be faithful to us, and carry out our orders to the best of his ability. But if evil comes to her we shall lose our hold upon him at once—I say all this before him because I’ve studied him and know him, and I want him to understand as much—and it has, therefore, been agreed that any man who interferes with the young lady will be shot at once and on the spot. So, now, mates, as you’ve had the whole affair explained to you, it is to be hoped you’ll shape your behaviour accordingly.”
“Stop a moment!” exclaimed Ned, as Williams waved his hand by way of dismissal to his little audience, “it seems, from what Williams has said, that Miss Stanhope has been detained a prisoner solely on my account. If that be really the case, I wish to say that, if you will release her and put her on shore with her friends on the island yonder, I swear to you that, though I will never take part in any piracies or other unlawful acts which you may commit, I will in every other respect be absolutely faithful to you, and will navigate the ship whithersoever you will, to the best of my ability. This is no light sacrifice for a young man in my position to make; yet I will make it cheerfully, and take any oath of fidelity you may choose to impose upon me.”
“It is no use, Ned; we can’t—we dare not do it,” answered Williams. “You mean what you say—now—I don’t doubt; but if you ever had a chance to betray us, as you may have, you wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation. No; the matter has been fully talked over, and the young lady must stay.”
Ned was about to make a further effort on Sibylla’s behalf, but the girl herself stopped him.
“Humble yourself no more to these men!” she said; “it will be of no avail, I can clearly see. And trouble not yourself on my behalf. God is able to protect me even here; His will be done!”
She turned away, and Ned, offering his arm, half led, half supported Sibylla into the cabin; and, as he poured out and offered her a glass of wine from a decanter which stood in one of the swinging trays over the table, he exclaimed:
“Oh! Miss Stanhope, what can I say, or how express the sorrow and regret I feel at the knowledge that it is through me you are placed in this terrible position. Believe me—”
“Say no more, Mr Damerell, I entreat you,” interrupted Sibylla. “I know that you have no cause for self-reproach; we are both equally unfortunate. For, if I am detained on board this ship a prisoner, so are you; your prospects in life are as completely blighted as mine. And I have at least the comfort of that man’s assurance—in which I believe he was quite sincere—that I shall be treated with consideration and respect. Indeed, terrible as must be my position here, I am by no means sure that I am not safer where I am than is my poor sister on that lonely island. What may be her fate and that of those who are with her who can tell? to what dangers and privations will not they be exposed? It is terrible only to think of it. And now let me thank you for your noble and self-sacrificing efforts just now on my behalf. Come what will, I shall never forget them, nor shall I ever forget that you have proved yourself our true and staunch friend, forgetting yourself and all your own trouble and peril in your anxiety to help and befriend us. Tell me, do you think there is any possibility of our ever being able to make our escape from these dreadful people?”
“Well,” said Ned, “I should not like to raise hopes which may never be fulfilled, but I think thereisjust a possibility of it. You must not build too much on what I say, because it would be idle to deny that our future is beset with difficulties and perils. The absence of your brother-in-law, the doctor, and Mr Gaunt is an irreparable loss to us, to say nothing of that of the captain and young Manners, both of whom will, I feel sure, be landed somewhere within the next few days. But do not despair; perhaps, when Williams has rid himself of them, his vigilance may relax. I should, under any circumstances, have tried to escape, and you may rest assured that, as your deliverance seems now to depend almost wholly upon me, my thoughts will more than ever be given to the project. What you have to do is to think as little as may be upon your present situation and to keep up your spirits. A chancemaycome to us at any moment—and I believe itwillcome, sooner or later. We must therefore be on the watch and hold ourselves ready to take advantage of it when it comes. The accidents—if I may call them so—of the sea are countless; we shall, by and by, be constantly hovering in the regular track of other ships, and that, in spite of all their vigilance, may afford us an opportunity to make our situation known. Or we may be captured; for, if the rascals carry out their present plans, it will not be long before we shall have all the men-of-war in these seas after us. Or we may, perhaps, be able to effect our escape in a boat. That gig of ours, in which our friends have been sent ashore is a splendid boat; and if we could get away in her whilst in some well-beaten ship track, with a good stock of provisions, we might well hope to be picked up in the course of a few days. That, however, I should only propose as a last resource. But the more I think of it the less hopeless do our prospects appear; so keep a good heart, Miss Stanhope, and hope for the best. By the by, do you know how to use a pistol?”
“Yes,” said Sibylla, “I know how to use a revolver. Duncan has—or had—a pair; and when we were at home he taught Rose and me how to fire them, putting up a target in the garden for us to shoot at. Why do you ask?”
“Because—although I think there is not much ground for apprehension—it will do no harm if you have a weapon upon which you can lay your hand in case of need. I have a pair of small revolvers which, though they are not very formidable weapons for long-distance shooting, are tolerably effective at close quarters, say within thirty yards or so. I will give you them—they are in a case, with cartridges and so on all complete; and I should like you to keep them always loaded and handy. And now, if you feel sufficiently composed to be left alone, I think I will go out on deck again and see how matters are progressing there.”
When Ned reached the poop, to which he naturally directed his steps, he found Williams there, fuming at the protracted absence of the boats, which could clearly be seen, with their noses hauled up on the sandy beach, and the two boat-keepers sitting in lazy attitudes on their gunwales, quietly smoking. That the remainder of the crews were not delayed by assisting the marooned passengers to “shake down” was evidenced by the fact that the latter could be seen grouped together on a little grassy knoll, the ladies and children seated upon boxes, whilst the two men were vigorously attacking with their axes a couple of young straight-stemmed palms at no great distance.
“What can the rascals be about?” growled Williams impatiently. “I’ll bet anything they are off skylarking in the woods, instead of hurrying back to the ship, as they ought. For’ard, there! pass the word for the boatswain to clear away one of those signal-guns. We’ll give them a shot by way of a reminder to quicken their motions.”
The gun was cleared away, loaded, and fired—not once but nearly a dozen times before the laggards appeared. They were seen at last, however, hurrying down to the beach, in little straggling groups, one after the other, and finally the boats pushed off and headed for the ship.
A quarter of an hour later they were alongside; and in another moment the two men who had been sent away in charge stood on the quarter-deck, confronting their angry chief.
“Come, Rogers I come, Martin! what the mischief have you been about, keeping us dodging in the offing all this while?” demanded Williams fiercely. “Hook on the tackles, and let us be off,” he continued.
“Wait a minute, cap’n,” answered Rogers; “we’ve a bit of news for you that I expect you won’t particularly relish. One of the men has cut and run; and it was hunting for him that kept us ashore so long.”
“Who is if!” demanded Williams.
“Why, it’s Tom Nicholls, one of the steerage passengers that Blyth shipped after we fell in with that barque on her beam-ends.”
“So he has bolted, has he, the white-livered hound!” ejaculated Williams furiously. “Well, he shall not escape us. Take your boats’ crews, both of you; give each man a rifle and half a dozen rounds of ball cartridge, and pull ashore again and hunt the cur until you find him, and bring him aboard here to me, dead or alive! I’ll anchor the ship and wait for you, if it takes you a week to do the job.”
“Ay, ay, we’ll get him before the day is over, never fear!” exclaimed Rogers, apparently in high glee at receiving the brutal order. “Come along, mates, and get your rifles; it isn’t every day that we get the chance of such a spree as a man-hunt!”
The boats’ crews had, during this short colloquy, scrambled up the ship’s side to the deck, and had gathered round the speakers, curious to see how Williams would receive the news of the loss; and it was to these that Rogers had addressed himself.
They did not, however, appear to by any means enter into the spirit of the thing, hanging back so coldly unresponsive to the mate’s jovial invitation that the latter paused in blank astonishment.
“Why—why—what the—” began Rogers, when he was brusquely interrupted by one of the men, who stepped forward and said:
“Get somebody else to go in my place, matey. I don’t understand man-huntin’, as you calls it, and should only make a poor fist at it, I’m afraid.”
“Same here,” said another. “I never done anything of the sort yet, and don’t know how to set about it.”
The others were expressing themselves to the same effect, when Williams darted forward, and, seizing the first speaker roughly by the collar, savagely demanded:
“Look here, you scoundrel, do you mean to say that youwon’tgo?”
“Ay, ay, shipmate, that’s just exactly what Idomean,” was the answer, given good-naturedly enough. “But take your hand off my collar,” the man continued more sternly. “Two can play at that game, you know; and I doubt whether you are man enough to thrash me.”
Williams, white as death with passion, prudently withdrew his hand from the man’s collar, and stepped back a pace or two.
“What does this mean?” he demanded. “Are you going to mutiny, men, before our cruise has even commenced?”
An insolent laugh greeted this inquiry; and the man who had just spoken answered:
“Call it what you like, Cap’n Josh; mutiny is as good a name for it as any other, I reckon. And what I mean is, that I, for one, ain’t goin’ ashore on no man-huntin’ expedition. There was nothing said about man-huntin’ when the articles for this here cruise was drawed up; and what I say is, if Tom Nicholls wants to cut and run, let him do it.”
“Ay, ay; so says I,” added another of the men. “He never entered into the thing with no spirit, anyhow; and if he’d rather be ashore there than makin’ his fortune aboard here with us, why, let him stay ashore, says I. ‘No manhuntin’’ is my sentiments.”
Several of the other men now declared themselves to the same effect, whereupon Williams, finding himself in the minority, said, with as perfect an assumption of indifference as he could command at the moment:
“Very well, lads; just as you please. It was of you, not of myself, that I was thinking. The work will be so much the heavier for you if Nicholls is allowed to escape; but, if you do not mind it, I am sure I need not. If, as you say, the fool prefers slaving ashore there for a bare living to making his fortune with us afloat, let him go. Up with the boats, and be smart about it! Up with your helm, abaft there, and let her go off square before the wind! Square the main-yard; and away aloft there, some of you, and rig out the topmast and topgallant-studding-sail booms!”
These orders were rapidly obeyed. The ship squared away before a freshening breeze; and two hours later the island was left so far astern that a landsman might easily have mistaken it for a grey cloud on the edge of the horizon.
The ship was kept running to the eastward all that day under studding-sails, and by sunset had travelled a distance of nearly seventy miles. At that hour, however, Ned requested that sail might be shortened and the ship allowed to go along under easy canvas during the night, urging the experience of the morning as a reason for caution whilst navigating that comparatively unknown sea. Williams at once assented to the suggestion, remarking immediately afterwards to Rogers, with a self-satisfied chuckle:
“That was a rare good move of ours, Bill, to keep the young woman aboard. See how cautious Mr Ned has grown all of a sudden! You may take my word for it, there will be no more tumbling over islands so long as she remains aboard of us.”
As it happened, it was just as well that the precaution was taken; for at midnight, just as the watch was being relieved, breakers were discovered ahead, and the ship was only brought to the wind just barely in time to avert a disaster. But even then the craft was by no means out of danger; for, when an attempt was made to claw off from the reefs to leeward, it was soon discovered that the vessel was embayed, other reefs being found to exist both to the northward and to the southward of her. For a few minutes something very like a panic took possession of the mutineers; but Williams proved himself equal to the occasion, stilling the tumult by a few brief authoritative words, and promptly ordering a man into the chains with the lead. Soundings were taken and a sandy bottom found, with just the right depth of water for anchoring. So the cable was roused on deck and bent on to the best bower, the ship making short reaches to the northward and southward meanwhile; and as soon as everything was ready a position was taken as nearly as possible midway between the reefs, and the anchor let go in twelve fathoms of water, with sixty fathoms of chain outside the hawse-pipe. The canvas was securely furled, the watch set, with one man told off to tend the lead-line which was dropped over the side to show whether the anchor held securely or not, and then nothing remained for them but to wait, with what patience they could muster, for daybreak.
This was a somewhat trying ordeal; for the night was pitch dark—the moon being new and not a star visible, the sky overcast, and the wind fresh and at times gusty. Moreover, they could form but a very vague idea of the dangers by which they were surrounded, the chart showing nothing but a clear sea; and, to further increase their anxiety, there was a heavy ground-swell rolling in from the westward, which caused the ship to bury herself to her hawse-pipes. Altogether, what with the uncertainty of their position, the inky darkness, and the ominous roar of the breakers all round them, it was a very anxious time for everybody on board theFlying Cloud.
At length, after what seemed an eternity of darkness, the harassed watchers caught the first faint signs of returning day. The forms of the clouds became dimly perceptible along the horizon to the eastward; then the cloud-bank itself broke up, revealing little patches here and there of soft violet-tinted sky, which rapidly paled, first to a pure and delicate ultramarine, and then to a soft primrose hue before the approaching dawn. The leaden-tinted clouds imperceptibly assumed a purple hue, then their lower edges became fringed with gold; and presently a long shaft of white light shot from the horizon half-way to the zenith, tinging the higher clouds—now broken up into a crowded archipelago of aerial islets—with flakes of “celestial rosy red,” and in another moment the golden upper rim of the sun’s disk flashed on the horizon, sending a long path of shimmering radiance across the bosom of the heaving, restless sea; and it was day.
The awkward character of the predicament in which the ship was involved now became sufficiently apparent. To the eastward and astern of her a small island, measuring about two miles from north to south, was seen. Its shores were indented and rocky, the surf beating upon them with great violence; and between it and the ship, at a distance nowhere greater than a mile, there lay an extensive crescent-shaped reef, almost completely encircling the unfortunate craft. The swell, rolling heavily in from the westward, hurled itself with appalling fury upon this reef, the far-reaching expanse of white water revealing distinctly the extremity of the peril through which the ship had passed during the previous night. Indeed, it was difficult to understand how she had escaped at all, for the opening between the two horns of the reef was so narrow that he would have been a bold navigator who would willingly have risked the passage, even in broad daylight.
Williams’ first act was to summon Rogers and Martin, in whose company he paid a visit to the fore-topmast cross-trees, where the trio devoted a full half-hour to a careful and critical examination of the ship’s position. Fortunately there was no occasion for haste, the anchor maintaining a firm grip of the ground, notwithstanding the occasional heavy plunges of the ship when some exceptionally big roller came sweeping in unbroken through the narrow channel in the reef. It was possible, therefore, for the mutineers to weigh well the advisability of the steps they contemplated, and to act with due caution. The cross-trees afforded a clear and thoroughly comprehensive view of the entire reef; and from this lofty stand-point the position of the ship was seen to be much less critical than it had appeared to be when viewed from the deck below. TheFlying Cloudwas, in fact, found to be lying in about the centre of a natural harbour. True, it was rather a wild berth for a ship, especially in the particular spot which she then occupied—this spot happening to be exactly opposite the opening in the reef and fully exposed to the unbroken run of the sea—but it was seen that by moving her half a cable’s-length either to the north or south the craft would be sheltered by one of the arms of the reef, and, with a couple of anchors down, might hope to ride out a moderately heavy gale in safety.
This was all very well, and very satisfactory—so far as it went—for it relieved their minds of all anxiety respecting the immediate safety of the ship. But, safe as she might be for the moment, the spot was not one in which a prudent mariner would linger one unnecessary instant; and Williams’ only anxiety just then was how to get out.
The channel into this natural harbour trended as nearly as possible due east and west; and, with the wind as it then stood, the ship, in order to get to sea, would have to make a series of short tacks to windward. But the opening was so narrow and tortuous that the little party in the cross-trees considered it exceedingly doubtful whether this would be possible with so lengthy a ship as theFlying Cloud; and, for the moment, it looked very much as though they would have to remain where they were until a change of wind should occur to release them.
At length, however, an expedition in the gig to the mouth of the channel was decided upon, and Ned—who had already distinguished himself by the exhibition of an altogether exceptional aptitude and dexterity in his handling of the ship—was instructed to join the party. The boat was soon lowered and manned, and, with Williams, Rogers, and Ned in the stern-sheets, pulled away towards the entrance. They had had the precaution to provide themselves with a hand-lead; and as soon as the channel was reached a very complete set of soundings, from end to end and over its entire width, was taken under Ned’s supervision. The result was unexpectedly satisfactory, no detached rocks being found in the fairway, whilst a tolerably even depth of water, nowhere less than five fathoms, and extending right up alongside the edge of the reef, prevailed throughout the entire length of the channel.
The progress of this survey was watched with the utmost anxiety by Williams—who, indeed, actually took the soundings with his own hands; and upon its completion he was so intensely gratified at the way in which this important service had been executed that he actually went the length of stammering out a few half-intelligible words of thanks to Ned.
The only question now remaining for settlement was, whether it would be prudent to make the attempt to work the ship out to sea. All hands were most keenly anxious to get clear of the place, for, safe as the ship just then undoubtedly was, they knew that it might prove a death-trap to them if it came on to blow heavily from the westward; but they also had the sense to know that a single mistake or miscalculation on the part of the person working the ship would send her on to the reef, a hopeless wreck.
Rogers and the boat’s crew were unanimously of opinion that the project was an impossibility; Williams expressed his belief that the thingmightbe done, but he at the same time frankly confessed that he had not faith enough in himself to undertake the responsibility. Ned prudently kept his opinion to himself until he was directly appealed to, when he modestly said that, with a smart hand at the wheel, a keen look-out aloft to warn him of the presence of any sunken rocks which might perchance have escaped their search, and a lively crew at the sheets and braces, he believed he would be able to work the ship into open water.
“Then,” exclaimed Williams with an oath, “you shall try your hand at the job. But remember,” he added, “if the ship touches anywhere, though it be only lightly enough to just graze the paint off her bottom, you may look out for squalls!”
“Now, look here, Williams,” answered Ned hotly, “if you want me to do my best for you, you had better be somewhat more sparing with your threats; and unless you withdraw what you have just said I shall decline to have anything to do with this matter. The task you have asked me to undertake is a most difficult and delicate one. I am quite willing to do my best, if you see fit to intrust me with the care of the ship, but it is a case in which even so slight a matter as a temporary flaw in the wind may bring about a very serious accident. If, therefore, I am to make the attempt, it must be with the distinct understanding that I am not to be held responsible for anything which may happen.”
“What d’ye think, mates? dare we trust him?” asked Williams, appealing to Rogers and the other men in the boat.
They said they thought that Ned’s objection was quite fair and reasonable; and Rogers, unceremoniously changing places with Ned, whispered something in Williams’ ear, whereupon the latter said:
“Very well. Will you swear, Ned, to honestly do your best to get the ship out of the fix she is now in, and to navigate her safely into open water?”
“Certainly I will, if you wish it,” answered Ned, “but a little reflection would convince you, I think, that I must be as little anxious as any of you to be cast away in such an unpromising spot as this.”
“All right, then,” said Williams; “we’ll chance it. Give way, men, for the ship.”
A quarter of an hour later all hands were once more on board, the boat was hoisted up to the davits, and the word was passed to man the windlass and heave short.