"Violet Hyde opened her eyes at once, and looked at me; but whether it was the starlight showing my uniform, or her fancying it was still the Indiaman in the Atlantic, in place of crying out, why, there was almost a smile on her lips as she saw me from the ground. Next moment, however, she drew her hand across her eyelids, sat up with the help of the other arm, and gazed on me in a bewildered way, naming me at the same time below her breath. 'Yes, Miss Hyde!' I said hastily; and a few words served to give her a notion of the case as well as to advise her to wake up the Judge, with the rest of the ladies, and be ready to move the moment we came back. My first thought was to take Foster's own plan, and secure the long-boat, if we could only get betwixt the Indiaman's crew and the water; or even try our own, or the opposite side of the island, and carry off the other boats to the wreck; after which we might keep off till the schooner appeared, as she couldn't be long of doing in this weather.
"I had just stolen back to the men and Mr Rollock, when all at once there was a wild cry, not twenty yards off, among the brushwood. A heavy blow and a struggle, in the midst of which three shots, one after the other, were heard from the cadets; next minute, with oaths and curses to the mast-head, and a crash through amongst the branches in the dark, Foster and his shipmates came making for the opening. Something horrible flashed through my mind as I fancied I had caught Finch's voice, whether one way or the other I couldn't say, for I had no thought at the time excepting for Violet. Shriek upon shriek broke from the ladies ere I well knew I had big Harry himself by the hairy throat of him, as he was aiming a left-handed stroke of his cutlass at the Judge, who had sprung betwixt him and his daughter. The strength of that ruffian was wonderful, for he flung me off and levelled Sir Charles Hyde at the same moment, the Judge's body tripping me.
"Jones and my own men, as well as the planter, were hard at work with the other five desperate villains, while the cadets and the second officer of the Seringapatam rushed in from the trees—all of it passing in half-a-minute. As I started to my feet, Foster had lifted Violet Hyde in his arms, and was dashing through the darkest of the wood with her toward the hollow, when, just as I was hard upon him, doubly to my horror, above all the screams of the ladies I could hear the wild drunken shouts of the crew below coming up from the beach like so many devils. Foster had got as far as the next opening where the rubbish of the hut was, and, no doubt catching the sound as well as myself, all at once he dropped the young lady on the grass—in a faint as she was, and her white dress stained with blood, as I thought from herself. 'Now, ye——' shouted he, turning bolt round till her moveless figure lay betwixt us, with a flourish of his cutlass, which I fancied was bloody too, 'who are you? You'll have a dozen on ye directly, but what's meat for the skipper's meat for the passenger, so——' 'Devil!' said I, through my teeth, as I edged round; and Foster was in the very act of rushing at me, whether he trod on her or not, when my voice or dress seemed to strike him in the dusk. 'How the bloody comfort did you——' said he, shrinking back for a moment; 'so much the better,' and he sprang forward again right upon me, with a swinging boarder's blow at my head, which flashed off my blade with a force enough to have shivered it, had it not been a first-rate old cut-and-thrust I had tried pretty stiffly before. If I hadn't been in such a fury of rage and a hurry at once, 'twould have been Harry's last hit; but, at the third he made, I caught him fair under it, the point going through and through his body, as I thrust him back stride by stride—his cutlass waving fiercely all the time in the air clear of my head, for the stroke came under his arm. The moment he fell, though I knew nothing before that of where we were, there was a heavy plunge; I had nearly followed on top of him, as he went head-foremost down the tank-well under the trees; but next moment, without a thought more to him in the heat of the struggle, I was lifting Violet off the grass. What I did or what I said, to see if she would revive, I don't really know; but I remember as well as if it were last night the very sound of her voice as she told me she wasn't hurt. The affair in the wood below us had suddenly ceased during these five or ten minutes—indeed, as I found afterwards, Jones and my party had settled every one of the five, either altogether or for the time; but the uproar of more than twenty fierce voices could be heard beyond them, cursing and yelling as they came stumbling and crashing up amongst the brushwood in a body; while the ladies and their companions struggled up from all sides toward the height, wild with terror. I met Sir Charles Hyde hurrying to seek his daughter, however; and the moment he had her in his arms, I rushed down, pistol in hand, to join my men, who were standing firm below, as the mutineers burst into the opening, no doubt with the notion they had only the cadets to do with.
"'Here, my lads!' I sang out; 'make every man of them prisoner—down with 'em to the schooner!' And as I broke suddenly through in the starlight in the midst of them, Jones, Jacobs, the planter, and the other four man-o'-war's-men sprang after me, one by one—taking the cue, and shouting as if to ever so many behind us, 'Here they are, shipmates—this way—settle the blackguards!' In fact, the moment I appeared, the gang of half-drunken fellows were taken aback. One of them roared as if he saw the very devil; and giving them no time to think, we drove them scattering down toward the beach. One of Foster's party, however, being only stunned, had contrived to get down amongst them; and in a little while, seeing we didn't follow, the whole lot of them appeared to get an inkling of the truth, on which they rallied. It wasn't long ere I saw they had got desperate, and were planning to divide, and come somewhere over upon us round the heights; so that, in the dark, with our small party, not knowing their numbers, the best we could do was to gather up toward the peak, and secure the ladies. Accordingly, we passed an uncomfortable enough time during the rest of the night, till daybreak, when still no signs of the schooner, as we saw in the clear to north-eastward. Frightful notions came into my head of something having happened to her; the mutineers below were on both sides of the island, and they held the watering-place. We hadn't provisions for a single breakfast to half the party of us—and the fellows being now fairly in for it, they could starve us out if they chose. You may conceive, accordingly, what a joyful sight met my eyes, when, on the dusk lifting off to northward, we could see the lovely craft under all sail not six miles off, bearing down before a fresh breeze for the deep end of the island!
"The wind had headed her off on her way back; and, knowing nothing of the wreck, Westwood might have landed at the mercy of the villains in the bush. But the minute we saw his boat out, the whole of us, save the Judge and the planter, made a clean charge down upon them—the schooner's men joining us with the oars and boat-stretchers; and in half-an-hour the whole gang, having lost heart, were taken and lashed fast by the wrists on the beach, to a single man.
"On searching the watering-place during the day, we found someone had covered the mouth of the tank with sticks and leaves, through which Harry Foster had gone when he fell. The stuff had fallen in over him; and the well being evidently made deep into the rock, to hold water the longer, with the roots of the trees growing out into it, his body never came up. Somehow or other, no one liked to sound it to the bottom; but the thing that horrified all of us the most was to find Captain Finch himself lying quite dead amongst the brushwood near where the passengers had pitched their quarters, with a cut through his skull enough to have killed an ox. It was supposed Foster had suddenly come upon him, as he and his shipmates looked out for the hoard they thought the pirates had in the island, while Finch was on guard over the ladies. Whether the fellow took a new notion at the moment, or what it was, the whole gang of them made their rush upon the second mate and the cadets, the minute after the captain met his death.
"As for Jones, he told me he had noticed the dog watching the seamen below, and the idea got into his head of what might happen. There was that about the animal to give one a dread you couldn't describe. How it had lived all this time, and how the customs came back on it, after growing perfectly wild, of carrying on like what it did that night, was a mystery; but Jones said he hadn't heard it bark before, neither had the man he knew of, since the time he was first left alone on White-water Island. In fact, the whole of us might have hunted it down before we left. But 'No!' Jones said; 'there's a perfect fiend in the brute, I do believe—yet it strikes me by this time, the creature belongs to—to the Almighty, sir!' The men and passengers had been taken off the Indiaman's wreck, which there was no chance of getting off the reef; so, taking out the best of her stores and the passengers' property, we had every soul aboard the schooner, and at last set sail to the south-east, meaning to go in at Madras, where a sloop might be sent to recover more from the ship. 'Twas with no ordinary state of things, from stem to stern, that we dropped White-water Island astern.
CHAPTER XXXII
"Well, ma'am, the rest you may easily fancy. We made Madras Roads, and there I expected to lose sight of the Judge and his daughter again, as we did of most of the other passengers; but to my perfect delight Sir Charles preferred carrying out the voyage on to Calcutta in the schooner, where they had the after-cabins to themselves. The Indiaman's crew I kept, prisoners and all, till we should meet the frigate off the Sunderbunds.