Captain Risk was killed, but he had inflicted a serious wound in the heat of battle, upon the plotter of the scheme. Thus the fate of a nation was in the balance.
The representative of British gold received pay for his pains when he was heartlessly left by the seaman in his cabin. When he aroused from his spell of unconsciousness, in a dazed condition, he looked around and found himself quite alone. After a short period of reflection, he remembered the capture of the Holker, the encounter with Risk and the death of the intrepid little captain as he attempted to blow up his ship and all on board.
“My God!” muttered Barclugh to himself. “Ever since I came aboard this craft, the fates seem to have worried me and to have been set against my enterprise. Zounds! I had tried to be of some service to Risk, but he has put me in my present predicament.
“Oh, Lord, have mercy upon me! Oh, that shoulder is done for! I cannot raise my left arm. I better try and call for some assistance.”
When Barclugh tried to raise himself, the loss of blood made his head light, and everything seemed to grow dark when he raised himself. He lay back in his berth, consoling himself by exclaiming:
“I had better remain where I am, and thank God that I am not worse off!”
Barclugh lay quietly in his berth for hours,—in fact until the morning after the fight. Captain Sutherland had thought of Barclugh as fast asleep, little thinking that his passenger would disobey orders. However, when Captain Sutherland had left a crew aboard the Holker to fit her out and take her to New York, he began to look after his passenger. Not finding him astir and nobody having seen him for twenty-four hours, he went to Barclugh’s stateroom and rapped on the door.
A voice within responded feebly:
“Come in.”
As the captain entered, he exclaimed: