“It was that lubber Gough,” muttered the man; “Phillips and he have gone to Davy Jones. I say, Mr Lowe, you’ll log it down to them, not to us; we were all three sheets in the wind.”
“It’s not for me to decide,” replied the mate; “you’ll all have justice, and that looks to me like a rope rove through a block at the fore-yard arm. What had he done to you that he should lie there, you damned mutinous scoundrels?”
“I say, my lads,” replied the still half-drunken man, “what’s the use of this kind of thing? If as how we are to blame for the skipper’s death, when we was as drunk as lords—if so be as we are to be yard-armed for what Gough and Phillips did, why let’s go overboard, says I.”
“I say, Mr Lowe,” humbly interposed another and more sober man, “we had nothing to do with this here matter. Them two bloody-minded villains promised us rum and gold. We deserve all we’ll get, but you’ll not be down on us too hard, will ye?”
“No, I’ll not,” replied the officer. “Collect the arms, Forest, and return them to the chest.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the man, obeying at once.
Every half-hour a gun from the whaler boomed over the sea, telling of her presence; but it was evident that not understanding the firing, her crew thought it safer to wait for daylight.
Isabel seemed stupefied with grief. Her senses were stunned by this last crowning misfortune. The missionary had now joined her, and by the feeble light had soon found that life was not quite extinct in his friend’s battered frame.
With the help of two of the mutineers, Hughes had been carried into the cabin, and laid on the spare sails; some weak brandy-and-water had been given him, and the blood washed from the pale face and clotted hair.
“It comes too late,” muttered Isabel, as she bent over her husband’s body. “It comes too late. What to me is yonder ship? Father and husband, father and husband gone!” she moaned.