For some time the exciting skirmish we have described continued, without anyone being hit, apparently, either above or below, till Morley felt someone close by utter a low heavy moan, or sigh, and then fall suddenly and heavily against him.
"Quail—Mr. Quail," he exclaimed, "is this you? Are you hurt—are you hit?"
It was poor Mr. Quail who, unable to reply, fell on the floor of the cabin with blood bubbling from his mouth. A lucifer-match was promptly applied to a candle, a light procured, and the wounded man was laid on the floor of the captain's state-room, where Dr. Heriot soon discovered that he was quite dead, being shot in the head by a common nail, a proof that the ammunition of the enemy above was running short.
"My God! Poor Quail—his wife and little ones!" exclaimed honest Captain Phillips, with deep emotion. "Oh, gentlemen, when will these horrors end?"
A low groan from Mr. Basset alone replied, and the features of the hapless mate soon grew livid and ghastly in the flickering light of the candle, as the damps and the pallor of death stole over them together.
Meanwhile the crash of axes was heard in the hold, where already some of the mutineers were making their way in search of plunder, through the cargo, hoping to make a breach in the bulkhead and reach the store where the ship's provisions and spirits were kept.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE CABIN ATTACKED.
Some of the mutineers now proceeded to throw various missiles, such as cold shot, ship-buckets, spare or fallen blocks from aloft, the carpenter's paint-pots, and so forth, into the ship's cabin; but only in one instance, when Tom Bartelot received a contusion on the shoulder, from a wooden marline-spike flung at random, did any of these take effect, as our friends lurked securely, pistol in hand, in the recesses of the upper stern-lockers, in the berths, and so forth, but none as yet could foresee where this strife was to end, or who would first come to terms, before the ship was utterly destroyed, as it bade fair to be, if this internal war continued.
Now the voice of Barradas was heard, giving orders to cast loose one of the carronades on the quarter-deck.