“‘What have you done with him, you son of Satan?’ I yelled out, full of rage and anger, and with a terrible foreboding. ‘If you have hurt a hair of his head I will make you pay dearly for it, I can tell you, you fiend!’
“The malicious, murdering wretch only replied to my threat with another mocking laugh, which his companions echoed, as if enjoying a joke, while I noticed them dragging at a shapeless mass from the forecastle forwards.
“‘Kick the carrion aft!’ I heard the inhuman brute say to his followers. ‘Let the “white trash” see the dog’s carcass! He will then believe what I have said, Name of God! and know what is in store for himself!’
“My God! Señor Applegarth and you, gentlemen, I can hardly tell you what followed. It is all too horrible.
“The sight of what I saw will haunt me to my grave!
“For the shapeless mass I had observed slowly raised itself up from the deck, and I saw that it was my poor Cato. The savages had hacked the unfortunate man to pieces with their knives!
“He recognised me, poor creature, and appeared to try to speak, but only made an inarticulate noise between a sob and a groan that rings in my ears now, while the blood gushed from his mouth as he fell forwards, facing me, dead, huddled up in a heap again upon the deck!
“Those devils incarnate, besides mutilating his limbs, had, would you believe it, cut out his tongue as they had before threatened, for warning us of their treachery!”
“God in heaven!” exclaimed Captain Applegarth, stopping in his quick walk up and down the saloon and bringing his fist down on the table with a bang that made the glasses in the swinging tray above jump and rattle, two of them indeed falling over and smashing into fragments on the floor. “The infernal demons! Can such things be? It is dreadful!”
All of us were equally horror stricken and indignant at the colonel’s terrible recital, even old Mr Stokes waking up and stretching out his hand to the skipper as if pledging himself to what he wished to urge before he spoke.