by Oliver Optic
CHAPTER XIV
THE CONSULTATION IN THE PILOT-HOUSE
Felipe Garcias, the first engineer of the Maud, had filled the sameposition on board of her when she was owned and used by Ali-Noury Pacha.He was a young man of eighteen now, a native of the Canary Islands, anda very religious Catholic. The orgies conducted by His Highness on boardof the little steamer, not to say the crimes, had disgusted and revoltedthe pious soul of the youth, and he had rebelled against his master.
For this he had been abused; and he had run away from his employer,departing alone in the Salihe, as she was then called. After anadventure with the unreformed Scott, the "Big Four" had been picked upat sea in an open boat, and conveyed to Gibraltar, where the Fatime hadfollowed the Guardian-Mother from Funchal.
Felipe quieted his conscience for taking the steam-yacht by causing herto be made fast to the Pacha's steamer, and leaving her there. At thatdistance from his home the little craft was an elephant on the hands ofthe owner, and he had sold her for a nominal price to one who haddisposed of her to the present owners. Don had been himself an engineeron board of the Fatime; but he had been threatened when he criticisedaffairs which occurred on board of her, and he was ill-treated. Heescaped from her at Gibraltar, and had been employed by Captain Ringgoldin his present capacity.
"The Fatime has gone to the bottom, Felipe," said Don as he entered theengine-room. "There will be no more defiance of the laws of God and manon board of her, for the present at least."
"God is good, and God is just," replied the chief engineer; but he didnot understand English quite well enough to comprehend the remark ofDon, who proceeded to repeat and explain it.
Captain Scott still remained at the wheel, and had not left it for amoment. He was thinking all the time of what he had done, and wonderingwhat his recording angel had written down in regard to his action in thegreatest emergency of his lifetime.
"Mazagan is wounded in the shoulder; but Pitts thinks it will not proveto be a fatal wound," said Felix as he went into the pilot-house.
"Has he come to his senses?" asked the captain.
"He has; and he wants to talk."
"I should like to hear him talk; for there are some things about thisaffair which I do not yet understand."
"The cook says he must not talk yet, and he is taking charge of thecase."
"Where is Louis?"
"He was looking on, and doing what he could for the wounded man. Do youknow, Captain Scott, I believe it was the ball from his rifle thatstruck Mazagan!" said Felix, with an impressive expression on his face.
"Nonsense, Flix!" exclaimed Scott. "How under the canopy can you tellwho fired the shot, when five of you were firing at the same time?"
"Within my knowledge Louis has defended himself with a revolver in hishand three times, and in every one of them he hit his man in the rightshoulder," replied Felix. "He never fires to kill; he is a dead shot,and he can put the ball just where he pleases every time. If Mazagan hadbeen shot dead, I should know that Louis did not do it."
"I remember that the fellow in the Muski was hit in the right shoulder,"added the captain.
"That disables a man without making a very dangerous wound. But,Captain, darling, don't whisper a word to Louis that he did it, for itmight make him feel bad."
"I won't say a word; but ask him to come to the pilot-house, for I wantto see him, Flix," said Scott, as he had had no opportunity since thecatastrophe to speak to the one he regarded as the most importantpersonage on board of the Maud.
In fact, but a very few minutes had elapsed since the event occurred.Those on the wreck had made haste to escape before they should becarried down with it, and they were still pulling at no great distancefrom the Maud for the shore. Louis appeared at the door of thepilot-house very promptly; for he imagined that his presence before thewounded man was not agreeable to him, and that it emphasized in his mindthe disastrous failure of his expedition to this island.
"What next, Louis?" asked the captain with a smile on his face; for hebelieved he had stolen his friend's first question "after the battle."
"That is for you to decide, Captain Scott, and I intend to avoid anyinterference with the duties of the commander," replied Louis.
"But when the commander asks for advice it may be given withoutoffence," suggested Scott. "We have just got out of the tightest placein which we have ever been placed, and our experience hitherto has beenboy's play compared with this day's work."
"That is very true; this is by all odds the most serious affair in whichwe have ever been engaged," answered Louis, as he seated himself on thedivan.
"I am not going to beat about the bush for a moment, my dear fellow; andbefore we talk about anything else, even of what we will do next in thistrying situation, I want to say that I am very much troubled in my mindin regard to the consequences of what _I_ have done," continued Scott,as he seated himself by the side of his friend and model on the divan.
"I don't wonder that you are troubled; so am I, for I think we may wellregard what has happened as an extraordinary event," added Louis.
"I say what _I_ have done; for I purposely abstained from asking adviceof you or any other fellow, after I had decided what to do, even ifthere had been time for me to consult you. In other words, I took theentire responsibility upon myself; and there I purpose to have it rest."
"Of course you had no time to ask the opinion of any fellow, even if itcould have been of any use to you."
"I believe I did the best I could. The shallow water at the south of usprevented me from running away in that direction, as I tried to do, andthe only avenue out of the difficulty was directly ahead of the Maud."
"I understand it all perfectly, for I could measure the situation fromthe upper deck," said Louis.
"I headed the steamer to the east. Then came that shot through thegalley. The Fatime was coming about in order to bring her port gun tobear upon us. She could not well avoid hitting us if she had tried to doso, we were so near. If the ball went through the engine or the boiler,both of which were exposed to the fire, that would have been the last ofus. Half of us might have been scalded to death; or, at the best,Mazagan might have knocked the Maud all to pieces at his leisure afterhe had disabled the vessel."
"Precisely so."
"I might have hoisted a white rag, and surrendered, permitting thepirate to take you on board his steamer; but if I had done that, Icould never have held up my head again, and I could never have looked myrecording angel in the face to tell him I had let the pirate take LouisBelgrave out of the Maud."
"It would not have ended in just the way you have pictured it, CaptainScott," added Louis with a smile. "I think enough of the ship's companywould have stood by me to enable me to make an effectual resistance, andMazagan might have got a bullet through his left breast instead ofthrough his right shoulder."
"Every fellow would have stood by you, my dear fellow, as long as youstood yourself," replied the captain. "If Mazagan had disabled the Maud,he could have retired out of reach of our rifle balls, and knocked ahole through the vessel with his guns, and sunk her. Then he would havehad nothing to do but to pick up his millionaire, and ransom him withdouble the sum he demanded in Cairo."
"Perhaps you are right, Captain Scott; but I think we need not discusswhat might have been. We know what is; and this is the problem withwhich we have to deal."
"Bluntly, Louis, I desire to ask you whether you approve or disapprovewhat I have done as the captain of the Maud?" continued Scott rathernervously for him.
"I wholly and heartily approve of what you have done!" protested Louiswith emphatic earnestness, and without an instant's hesitation.
"My dear Louis, give me your hand!" exclaimed Scott, springing to hisfeet; they clasped hands in front of the wheel, and the captain seemeddisposed to extend it to an embrace. "You have removed all my doubts andanxiety by what you said and the manner in which you said it. If youapprove my action, I believe the commander will do the same."
"Wh
ile I do not accept your view of what might have followed if you haddone otherwise, I believe you did the best thing that could be done. Ifthe end had not come just as you say, it would have amounted to the samething. Let us leave the subject now, and come back to the question youasked me when I came in. What shall be done next?" said Louis.
"I don't think we can do anything but wait here till the Guardian-Mothercomes. If we go to sea, she will not know where to find us," repliedCaptain Scott. "What do you think of it, Louis?"
"I am decidedly opposed to remaining where we are. Though you and I mayagree that what has been done is all right, the officers of the Turkishgovernment in authority on this island may not be of that opinion. Thereis no town, or anything like one, in sight, and I have not been able tomake out even a single house or habitation of any kind."
"It is an exceedingly rough-looking country on shore. There are nothingbut mountains and forests to be seen. The nearest town put down on thechart is more than ten miles distant, though there may be a village orhouses behind those hills on the shore to the south of us. If any ofthe inhabitants had heard the three shots fired by the pirate, theywould have shown themselves before this time."
"But I think we had better be farther from the island. When theGuardian-Mother comes, she must take the same course which we followedyesterday," persisted Louis. "I quite agree with you that we must remainin this vicinity. It is almost as calm outside the bay as it is inside.How is the water off the cape?"
"There are eight fathoms half a mile from the point. I think you areright, on the whole, Louis; for we don't care to meet any Turkishofficers of any kind," replied the captain, as he rang the gong to goahead.
The sound of the bell brought all hands except Morris, who hadvolunteered to stay with the patient in the cabin, to the forecastle.Pitts had gone to the galley to ascertain the condition of his waresafter the passage of a twelve-pound shot through his quarters. The stovehad not been struck, but it had knocked about everything else into theutmost confusion. He was arranging things as well as he could; for itwas now five o'clock in the afternoon, and time to think of gettingsupper.
"How is your patient, Pitts?" asked Louis, coming to the door.
"He is doing well enough, though he has a good deal of pain. I supposethe ball is still in his shoulder, and he will not be much better tillthat is removed, Mr. Belgrave," replied the cook. "We are under wayagain, sir."
"We are running out to the cape to wait for the Guardian-Mother,"returned Louis, as he joined the others on the forecastle.
The two boats from the wreck had made a landing on a point near theconic rock on the ledge. The course of the Maud took her within half amile of them; for she passed over the outer extremity of the ledge.
"They are making signals to us," said Felix to the captain. "There goesa white cloth on a pole."
A little later a boat put off pulled by four men, with another in thestern sheets. The captain rang to stop the screw; for he was curious toknow what the men wanted.
"Let the boat come alongside," said he.
There was not force enough to do any mischief if the Moors had been sodisposed. Don was sent for to do the talking; but the first person Louissaw was Jules Ulbach, who had been Mazagan's assistant in hisoperations. Louis talked with him in French. His first statement wasthat his employer had been shot in the shoulder, and had gone down withthe wreck. The spokesman for the steamer did not deem it advisable tocontradict this statement.
Then Ulbach begged for a passage to some port from which he could returnto Paris. A few words passed between the captain and Louis, and therequest was peremptorily refused. The Frenchman begged hard, declaringthat the island was a desolate place, and he should starve there. Themen had come to beg some provisions, as they had not a morsel to eat.
"Give them all they want to eat," replied the captain when the requestwas translated to him.
"The Guardian-Mother!" suddenly shouted Felix at the top of his lungs.
All hands gave three rousing cheers, to the astonishment of theFrenchman and those in the boat. Pitts came out of the galley toascertain the cause of the demonstration, and he made out for himselfthe bow of the ship passing the point of the cape. A plentiful supply offood was put into the boat, and the Maud continued on her course.