“That’s the little Britisher I told you about, who was so plucky,” explained the colonel—“Mr Johnson.”
“Well, my father,” continued the young girl, “these three rushed down the stairs into the cabin, shortly before the steamer thumped against the side of our ship, when I thought we were all going down to the bottom of the sea.”
“Yes, my child,” said the colonel encouragingly, “go on and tell us what happened next.”
“The English gentleman spoke to me and said that the terrible negroes had conquered them all on deck, but that he and the two Frenchmen had escaped from them in time, and were going to barricade the doorway leading down from above to prevent the black men from coming below and murdering us all.
“He told me, though, did the kind English gentleman, that I must not be frightened and all would come right in the end, for that they had seen a very large steamer approaching, coming quite close to us, and that they would be able, he thought, to hold out until we were all rescued. They then piled up heaps and heaps of things against the door at the foot of the stairs where the sailors remained; then the Englishman stood on the table, under the skylight, to keep the negroes from getting through there. It was the Englishman who fired at them through the glass, for he was the only one who had a pistol, and he made a hole and then through that we heard all the shrieks and the noise of the pistols; and your voice, my father, Ivan heard, and then he jumped up through the hole, making a much bigger one, and ran to your rescue, my dear, dear father.”
“But what has become of Monsieur Boisson, and Madame all this time; where were they?” asked the colonel, on Elsie thus concluding the account of what had occurred under her immediate notice, a little sob escaping her involuntarily at the mention of her poor dog’s name, and at the recollection of what she had just witnessed. “Did they do anything, my dear child to help themselves, or you?”
“No, my father,” she replied, apparently surprised at the question. “They are still in the big cabin at the end of the saloon where you left them when you went away, and, I’m afraid they are very ill indeed, for all the time the firing was going on overhead Madame was screeching and screaming, and I am sure I heard Monsieur groaning a good deal. He was doing so again just now, before I found my way upstairs to you, to find you, and to see what had happened, everything had become so suddenly still after all the noise, and—and—those—awful horrible yells of the negroes—oh! I—I—can hear them still!”
She turned quite pale when uttering the last words, words spoken with visible effort, shuddering all over and hiding her face again on her father’s shoulder.
“Faith, sor, don’t ask her any more questions,” cried Garry, “but we’d betther be sayin’ afther those poor fellows ourselves, an’ at once, too!”
“Do quickly, sir doctor,” said the colonel, “and I only wish I could come with you! but—”