At seven o'clock there had been also a commotion in the prison. The newsof the fever had awoke in the convicts all that love of liberty whichhad but slumbered during the monotony of the earlier part of the voyage.Now that death menaced them, they longed fiercely for the chance ofescape which seemed permitted to freemen. "Let us get out!" they said,each man speaking to his particular friend. "We are locked up here todie like sheep." Gloomy faces and desponding looks met the gaze of each,and sometimes across this gloom shot a fierce glance that lighted upits blackness, as a lightning-flash renders luridly luminous the indigodullness of a thunder-cloud. By and by, in some inexplicable way, itcame to be understood that there was a conspiracy afloat, that theywere to be released from their shambles, that some amongst them had beenplotting for freedom. The 'tween decks held its foul breath in wonderinganxiety, afraid to breathe its suspicions. The influence of thispredominant idea showed itself by a strange shifting of atoms. Themass of villainy, ignorance, and innocence began to be animated withsomething like a uniform movement. Natural affinities came together,and like allied itself to like, falling noiselessly into harmony, as thepieces of glass and coloured beads in a kaleidoscope assume mathematicalforms. By seven bells it was found that the prison was divided intothree parties--the desperate, the timid, and the cautious. These threeparties had arranged themselves in natural sequence. The mutineers,headed by Gabbett, Vetch, and the Moocher, were nearest to the door; thetimid--boys, old men, innocent poor wretches condemned on circumstantialevidence, or rustics condemned to be turned into thieves for pullinga turnip--were at the farther end, huddling together in alarm; and theprudent--that is to say, all the rest, ready to fight or fly, advance orretreat, assist the authorities or their companions, as the fortune ofthe day might direct--occupied the middle space. The mutineers propernumbered, perhaps, some thirty men, and of these thirty only half adozen knew what was really about to be done.
The ship's bell strikes the half-hour, and as the cries of the threesentries passing the word to the quarter-deck die away, Gabbett, who hasbeen leaning with his back against the door, nudges Jemmy Vetch.
"Now, Jemmy," says he in a whisper, "tell 'em!"
The whisper being heard by those nearest the giant, a silence ensues,which gradually spreads like a ripple over the surface of the crowd,reaching even the bunks at the further end.
"Gentlemen," says Mr. Vetch, politely sarcastic in his own hangdogfashion, "myself and my friends here are going to take the ship for you.Those who like to join us had better speak at once, for in about half anhour they will not have the opportunity."
He pauses, and looks round with such an impertinently confident air,that three waverers in the party amidships slip nearer to hear him.
"You needn't be afraid," Mr. Vetch continues, "we have arranged it allfor you. There are friends waiting for us outside, and the door will beopen directly. All we want, gentlemen, is your vote and interest--I meanyour--"
"Gaffing agin!" interrupts the giant angrily. "Come to business, carn'tyer? Tell 'em they may like it or lump it, but we mean to have the ship,and them as refuses to join us we mean to chuck overboard. That's aboutthe plain English of it!"
This practical way of putting it produces a sensation, and theconservative party at the other end look in each other's faces with somealarm. A grim murmur runs round, and somebody near Mr. Gabbett laughs alaugh of mingled ferocity and amusement, not reassuring to timid people."What about the sogers?" asked a voice from the ranks of the cautious.
"D--- the sogers!" cries the Moocher, moved by a sudden inspiration."They can but shoot yer, and that's as good as dyin' of typhus anyway!"
The right chord had been struck now, and with a stifled roar the prisonadmitted the truth of the sentiment. "Go on, old man!" cries Jemmy Vetchto the giant, rubbing his thin hands with eldritch glee. "They're allright!" And then, his quick ears catching the jingle of arms, he said,"Stand by now for the door--one rush'll do it."
It was eight o'clock and the relief guard was coming from the afterdeck. The crowd of prisoners round the door held their breath to listen."It's all planned," says Gabbett, in a low growl. "W'en the door h'openswe rush, and we're in among the guard afore they know where they are.Drag 'em back into the prison, grab the h'arm-rack, and it's all over."
"They're very quiet about it," says the Crow suspiciously. "I hope it'sall right."
"Stand from the door, Miles," says Pine's voice outside, in its usualcalm accents.
The Crow was relieved. The tone was an ordinary one, and Miles was thesoldier whom Sarah Purfoy had bribed not to fire. All had gone well.
The keys clashed and turned, and the bravest of the prudent party,who had been turning in his mind the notion of risking his life for apardon, to be won by rushing forward at the right moment and alarmingthe guard, checked the cry that was in his throat as he saw the menround the door draw back a little for their rush, and caught a glimpseof the giant's bristling scalp and bared gums.
"NOW!" cries Jemmy Vetch, as the iron-plated oak swung back, and withthe guttural snarl of a charging wild boar, Gabbett hurled himself outof the prison.
The red line of light which glowed for an instant through the doorwaywas blotted out by a mass of figures. All the prison surged forward, andbefore the eye could wink, five, ten, twenty, of the most desperatewere outside. It was as though a sea, breaking against a stone wall,had found some breach through which to pour its waters. The contagionof battle spread. Caution was forgotten; and those at the back, seeingJemmy Vetch raised upon the crest of that human billow which reared itsblack outline against an indistinct perspective of struggling figures,responded to his grin of encouragement by rushing furiously forward.
Suddenly a horrible roar like that of a trapped wild beast was heard.The rushing torrent choked in the doorway, and from out the lantern glowinto which the giant had rushed, a flash broke, followed by a groan, asthe perfidious sentry fell back shot through the breast. The mass inthe doorway hung irresolute, and then by sheer weight of pressure frombehind burst forward, and as it so burst, the heavy door crashed intoits jambs, and the bolts were shot into their places.
All this took place by one of those simultaneous movements which are sorapid in execution, so tedious to describe in detail. At one instant theprison door had opened, at the next it had closed. The picture whichhad presented itself to the eyes of the convicts was as momentary as arethose of the thaumatoscope. The period of time that had elapsed betweenthe opening and the shutting of the door could have been marked by themusket shot.
The report of another shot, and then a noise of confused cries, mingledwith the clashing of arms, informed the imprisoned men that the shiphad been alarmed. How would it go with their friends on deck? Would theysucceed in overcoming the guards, or would they be beaten back? Theywould soon know; and in the hot dusk, straining their eyes to see eachother, they waited for the issue Suddenly the noises ceased, and astrange rumbling sound fell upon the ears of the listeners.
* * * * *
What had taken place?
This--the men pouring out of the darkness into the sudden glare ofthe lanterns, rushed, bewildered, across the deck. Miles, true to hispromise, did not fire, but the next instant Vickers had snatched thefirelock from him, and leaping into the stream, turned about andfired down towards the prison. The attack was more sudden then he hadexpected, but he did not lose his presence of mind. The shot would servea double purpose. It would warn the men in the barrack, and perhapscheck the rush by stopping up the doorway with a corpse. Beaten back,struggling, and indignant, amid the storm of hideous faces, his humanityvanished, and he aimed deliberately at the head of Mr. James Vetch; theshot, however, missed its mark, and killed the unhappy Miles.
Gabbett and his companions had by this time reached the foot of thecompanion ladder, there to encounter the cutlasses of the doubled guardgleaming redly in the glow of the lanterns. A glance up the hatchwayshowed the giant that the arms he had planned to seiz
e were defended byten firelocks, and that, behind the open doors of the partition whichran abaft the mizenmast, the remainder of the detachment stood to theirarms. Even his dull intellect comprehended that the desperate projecthad failed, and that he had been betrayed. With the roar of despairwhich had penetrated into the prison, he turned to fight his way back,just in time to see the crowd in the gangway recoil from the flash ofthe musket fired by Vickers. The next instant, Pine and two soldiers,taking advantage of the momentary cessation of the press, shot thebolts, and secured the prison.
The mutineers were caught in a trap.
The narrow space between the barracks and the barricade was choked withstruggling figures. Some twenty convicts, and half as many soldiers,struck and stabbed at each other in the crowd. There was barelyelbow-room, and attacked and attackers fought almost without knowingwhom they struck. Gabbett tore a cutlass from a soldier, shook hishuge head, and calling on the Moocher to follow, bounded up the ladder,desperately determined to brave the fire of the watch. The Moocher,close at the giant's heels, flung himself upon the nearest soldier, andgrasping his wrist, struggled for the cutlass. A brawny, bull-neckedfellow next him dashed his clenched fist in the soldier's face, and theman maddened by the blow, let go the cutlass, and drawing his pistol,shot his new assailant through the head. It was this second shot thathad aroused Maurice Frere.
As the young lieutenant sprang out upon the deck, he saw by the positionof the guard that others had been more mindful of the safety of the shipthan he. There was, however, no time for explanation, for, as he reachedthe hatchway, he was met by the ascending giant, who uttered a hideousoath at the sight of this unexpected adversary, and, too close to strikehim, locked him in his arms. The two men were drawn together. The guardon the quarter-deck dared not fire at the two bodies that, twinedabout each other, rolled across the deck, and for a moment Mr. Frere'scherished existence hung upon the slenderest thread imaginable.
The Moocher, spattered with the blood and brains of his unfortunatecomrade, had already set his foot upon the lowest step of the ladder,when the cutlass was dashed from his hand by a blow from a clubbedfirelock, and he was dragged roughly backwards. As he fell upon thedeck, he saw the Crow spring out of the mass of prisoners who had been,an instant before, struggling with the guard, and, gaining the clearedspace at the bottom of the ladder, hold up his hands, as though toshield himself from a blow. The confusion had now become suddenlystilled, and upon the group before the barricade had fallen thatmysterious silence which had perplexed the inmates of the prison.
They were not perplexed for long. The two soldiers who, with theassistance of Pine, had forced-to the door of the prison, rapidlyunbolted that trap-door in the barricade, of which mention has been madein a previous chapter, and, at a signal from Vickers, three men ran theloaded howitzer from its sinister shelter near the break of the barrackberths, and, training the deadly muzzle to a level with the opening inthe barricade, stood ready to fire.
"Surrender!" cried Vickers, in a voice from which all "humanity" hadvanished. "Surrender, and give up your ringleaders, or I'll blow you topieces!"
There was no tremor in his voice, and though he stood, with Pine by hisside, at the very mouth of the levelled cannon, the mutineers perceived,with that acuteness which imminent danger brings to the most stolidof brains, that, did they hesitate an instant, he would keep his word.There was an awful moment of silence, broken only by a skurrying noisein the prison, as though a family of rats, disturbed at a flour cask,were scampering to the ship's side for shelter. This skurrying noise wasmade by the convicts rushing to their berths to escape the threatenedshower of grape; to the twenty desperadoes cowering before the muzzle ofthe howitzer it spoke more eloquently than words. The charm was broken;their comrades would refuse to join them. The position of affairs atthis crisis was a strange one. From the opened trap-door came a sort ofsubdued murmur, like that which sounds within the folds of a sea-shell,but, in the oblong block of darkness which it framed, nothing wasvisible. The trap-door might have been a window looking into a tunnel.On each side of this horrible window, almost pushed before it by thepressure of one upon the other, stood Pine, Vickers, and the guard. Infront of the little group lay the corpse of the miserable boy whom SarahPurfoy had led to ruin; and forced close upon, yet shrinking back fromthe trampled and bloody mass, crouched in mingled terror and rage, thetwenty mutineers. Behind the mutineers, withdrawn from the patch oflight thrown by the open hatchway, the mouth of the howitzer threateneddestruction; and behind the howitzer, backed up by an array of brownmusket barrels, suddenly glowed the tiny fire of the burning match inthe hand of Vickers's trusty servant.
The entrapped men looked up the hatchway, but the guard had alreadyclosed in upon it, and some of the ship's crew--with that carelessnessof danger characteristic of sailors--were peering down upon them. Escapewas hopeless.
"One minute!" cried Vickers, confident that one second would beenough--"one minute to go quietly, or--"
"Surrender, mates, for God's sake!" shrieked some unknown wretch fromout of the darkness of the prison. "Do you want to be the death of us?"
Jemmy Vetch, feeling, by that curious sympathy which nervous naturespossess, that his comrades wished him to act as spokesman, raised hisshrill tones. "We surrender," he said. "It's no use getting our brainsblown out." And raising his hands, he obeyed the motion of Vickers'sfingers, and led the way towards the barrack.
"Bring the irons forward, there!" shouted Vickers, hastening from hisperilous position; and before the last man had filed past the stillsmoking match, the cling of hammers announced that the Crow had resumedthose fetters which had been knocked off his dainty limbs a monthpreviously in the Bay of Biscay.
In another moment the trap-door was closed, the howitzer rumbled back toits cleatings, and the prison breathed again.
* * * * *
In the meantime, a scene almost as exciting had taken place on the upperdeck. Gabbett, with the blind fury which the consciousness of failurebrings to such brute-like natures, had seized Frere by the throat,determined to put an end to at least one of his enemies. But desperatethough he was, and with all the advantage of weight and strength uponhis side, he found the young lieutenant a more formidable adversary thanhe had anticipated.
Maurice Frere was no coward. Brutal and selfish though he might be, hisbitterest enemies had never accused him of lack of physical courage.Indeed, he had been--in the rollicking days of old that weregone--celebrated for the display of very opposite qualities. He was anamateur at manly sports. He rejoiced in his muscular strength, and, inmany a tavern brawl and midnight riot of his own provoking, had provedthe fallacy of the proverb which teaches that a bully is always acoward. He had the tenacity of a bulldog--once let him get his teeth inhis adversary, and he would hold on till he died. In fact he was, asfar as personal vigour went, a Gabbett with the education of aprize-fighter; and, in a personal encounter between two men of equalcourage, science tells more than strength. In the struggle, however,that was now taking place, science seemed to be of little value. To theinexperienced eye, it would appear that the frenzied giant, grippingthe throat of the man who had fallen beneath him, must rise from thestruggle an easy victor. Brute force was all that was needed--there wasneither room nor time for the display of any cunning of fence.
But knowledge, though it cannot give strength, gives coolness. Taken bysurprise as he was, Maurice Frere did not lose his presence of mind. Theconvict was so close upon him that there was no time to strike; but,as he was forced backwards, he succeeded in crooking his knee round thethigh of his assailant, and thrust one hand into his collar. Over andover they rolled, the bewildered sentry not daring to fire, until theship's side brought them up with a violent jerk, and Frere realized thatGabbett was below him. Pressing with all the might of his muscles, hestrove to resist the leverage which the giant was applying to turn himover, but he might as well have pushed against a stone wall. With hiseyes protruding, and every
sinew strained to its uttermost, he wasslowly forced round, and he felt Gabbett releasing his grasp, in orderto draw back and aim at him an effectual blow. Disengaging his lefthand, Frere suddenly allowed himself to sink, and then, drawing up hisright knee, struck Gabbett beneath the jaw, and as the huge head wasforced backwards by the blow, dashed his fist into the brawny throat.The giant reeled backwards, and, falling on his hands and knees, was inan instant surrounded by sailors.
Now began and ended, in less time than it takes to write it, one ofthose Homeric struggles of one man against twenty, which are nonethe less heroic because the Ajax is a convict, and the Trojans merelyordinary sailors. Shaking his assailants to the deck as easily as awild boar shakes off the dogs which clamber upon his bristly sides, theconvict sprang to his feet, and, whirling the snatched-up cutlass roundhis head, kept the circle at bay. Four times did the soldiers round thehatchway raise their muskets, and four times did the fear of woundingthe men who had flung themselves upon the enraged giant compel them torestrain their fire. Gabbett, his stubbly hair on end, his bloodshoteyes glaring with fury, his great hand opening and shutting in air, asthough it gasped for something to seize, turned himself about from sideto side--now here, now there, bellowing like a wounded bull. Hiscoarse shirt, rent from shoulder to flank, exposed the play of his hugemuscles. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, and the blood,trickling down his face, mingled with the foam on his lips, and droppedsluggishly on his hairy breast. Each time that an assailant came withinreach of the swinging cutlass, the ruffian's form dilated with a freshaccess of passion. At one moment bunched with clinging adversaries--hisarms, legs, and shoulders a hanging mass of human bodies--at the next,free, desperate, alone in the midst of his foes, his hideous countenancecontorted with hate and rage, the giant seemed less a man than a demon,or one of those monstrous and savage apes which haunt the solitudesof the African forests. Spurning the mob who had rushed in at him, hestrode towards his risen adversary, and aimed at him one final blow thatshould put an end to his tyranny for ever. A notion that Sarah Purfoyhad betrayed him, and that the handsome soldier was the cause ofthe betrayal, had taken possession of his mind, and his rage hadconcentrated itself upon Maurice Frere. The aspect of the villain was soappalling, that, despite his natural courage, Frere, seeing the backwardsweep of the cutlass, absolutely closed his eyes with terror, andsurrendered himself to his fate.
As Gabbett balanced himself for the blow, the ship, which had beenrocking gently on a dull and silent sea, suddenly lurched--the convictlost his balance, swayed, and fell. Ere he could rise he was pinioned bytwenty hands.
Authority was almost instantaneously triumphant on the upper and lowerdecks. The mutiny was over.
CHAPTER XI. DISCOVERIES AND CONFESSIONS.
For the Term of His Natural Life Page 12