Poor Captain Dinks had been carefully lifted into the saloon, where, on removing his clothes, it was discovered that Moody’s stab, although inflicting a dangerous cut across the chest, had touched no vital part, the sufferer’s exhaustion proceeding more from loss of blood than from any imminent risk. He was therefore placed in his own cot and the wound strapped up, after which he sank into a feverish sleep, with Kate watching by his side.
Mr Meldrum, who had been urgently asked by Mr McCarthy and Adams to take command of the ship while the captain was incapacitated, a request that the crew heartily endorsed and which Captain Dinks himself confirmed as soon as he recovered consciousness proceeded in the interim to devise the best means he could for saving all on board; and, in the first place, he ordered the men to renew the lashings of the jolly-boat. This was their sole remaining means of escape, and was now in danger of being washed overboard by the heavy seas that were breaking over the ship in cataracts of foam.
Immediately the mutineers had got away in the long-boat it had come on to blow harder; and, shortly after they were out of sight in the haze that hung over the land, a tremendous squall had swept over the water in the direction they were last seen, the billows mounting so high as they raced by the stranded vessel that it was very problematical whether the boat would ever reach the shore. Mr Meldrum could not help observing that those left on board had much greater chance of saving their lives, in spite of the waves breaking over the ship, which trembled through her frame with the repeated shocks she was subjected to as she was jolted on the rocks as if coming to pieces every minute.
“The poor captain was right after all,” said he to Mr McCarthy. “Those scamps in the long-boat had better have waited till morning, as he said. I don’t think they’ll ever get to land.”
“Nor I, sorr,” replied the first mate; “but it sarves them right, bad cess to ’em!”
“Well,” said the other, “if they have gone down, they’ve gone with all their sins on their heads, for they certainly believed that they left us to perish, and did so purposely, too!”
“Jist so, the murtherin’ villins!” ejaculated Mr McCarthy.
Mr Lathrope at that moment came up from the cuddy.
“Whar’s that sanctimonious cuss of a steward!” inquired he. “I’ve shouted clean through the hull ship, and I’m durned ef I ken find him to git some grub; for I feels kinder peckish arter that there muss. I guess the critter has sloped with them t’other skunks!”
“We’ll muster the hands and see,” said Mr Meldrum.