“Why, you left him on guard with the others at the cabin-door,” said a man surlily.
“Fetch him here: I did,” said Jarette, and I felt then that I was going down on the heads of the men below. But I made one more desperate effort, as I heard the soft footsteps moving off in different directions; and then almost without a sound I got my arm round the outside shroud, then one leg round,—how I can hardly tell you now, I was so exhausted,—and the next minute I had relieved my muscles of the strain, and was standing there with my feet on the ratlines, my arms thrust right through and folded round one of the inner ropes, and my head thrust through as well; safe, I felt, even if I lost my senses and fainted away.
Fortunately for me, the ship was heeling over now in the opposite direction, so that my position was easier, and as I half lay, half clung there, the painful stress on mind and body grew lighter—at least the bodily stress did, and I began to think more clearly.
It was horrible. The ship then had been seized by the crew, headed by Jarette. Some of the men had resisted, and were prisoners in the forecastle; but Bob Hampton had gone over to the side of the mutineers, and the others were sure to follow. But the worst thing of all was the knowledge that my brother midshipman was in the mutiny, and keeping guard over the officers and passengers. And he was a gentleman’s son. Here then was the explanation of his being so friendly with Jarette, and that was why he and Jarette had been up aloft in the dark.
I shivered at the thought. But the next moment I was seeing something else clearly, and I guessed at two things which afterwards I found to be correct. Jarette had traded upon Walters’ discontent, and won him over with, no doubt, great promises, because he would be useful; and of course I saw it plainly now it had been necessary to fasten the cabin-doors, and shut the officers in. Mr Frewen was, as I had heard, locked in his cabin. Who was there to go quietly at night and fasten their doors? No one more likely than the lad who had the run of the cabins and saloon.
“No, I won’t believe it,” I thought the next moment. “Nic Walters couldn’t be such a miserable scoundrel as that.”
Chapter Eleven.
What was I to do?