"Look for yourselves!" he muttered. "Too late for any of your work, doctor. But—that sixth man?"
Lorrimore and I, giving no heed just then to the detective's questioning about the escaped man, went towards the after part of the deck. Busied with their labours in getting the fire under control, the blue-jackets had up to then left the dead men where they found them—with one exception. The man whom they had found in the bows had been carried aft and laid near the entrance to the little deck-house—some hand had thrown a sheet over him. Lorrimore lifted it—we looked down. Baxter!
"That's the fellow we found right forward," said the lieutenant. "He's several slighter wounds on him, but he'd been shot through the chest—heart, perhaps—just before we boarded her. That would be the shot fired by the man in the boat, I suppose—a good marksman! Was this the skipper?"
"Chief spirit," said I. "He was lively enough last night. But—the rest?"
"They're all over the place," he answered. "They must have had a most desperate do of it. The vessel's more like a slaughter-house than a ship!"
He was right there, and I was thankful that Miss Raven and I for whatever reason on the part of the Chinese, had been so unceremoniously sent ashore before the fight began. As Lorrimore went about, noting its evidences, I endeavoured to form some idea, more or less accurate, of the events which had led up to it. It seemed to me that either Baxter or the Frenchman, awaking from sleep sooner than the Chinese had expected, had discovered that treachery was afoot and that wholesale shooting had begun on all sides. Most of the slaughter had taken place immediately in front of the hatchway which led to the cabin in which I had seen Baxter and his two principal associates; some sort of a rough barricade had been hastily set up there; behind it the Frenchman lay dead, with a bullet through his brain; before it, here and there on the deck, lay three of the Chinese—their leader, still in his gaily-coloured sleeping suit, prominent amongst them; Lo Chuh Fen a little further away; the third man near the wheel, face downwards. He, like Chuh, was a small-made, wiry fellow. And there was blood everywhere.
Scarterfield jogged my elbow as I stood staring at these unholy sights. He was keener of look than I had ever seen him.
"That fourth Chinaman?" he said. "I must get him, dead or alive. The rest's nothing—I want him!"