The doctor, who was ready and waiting at the ship’s side, at once went down by the commodore’s orders and examined the dead men, who we now saw were five in number, though they smelt like five hundred.
“Bedad, Tom,” said Mick to me, as we looked down over the side, holding our noses—as, indeed, everybody on board was doing, every man-jack in the ship, I think, being on deck, from the old commodore down to the youngest middy and ship’s boy—“Oi nivver smilt a shmell loike thet since me faither an’ Oi wor at Clontarf whin they opened the graveyard theer, and toorned the owld coffins out wid the bones rattlin’ aboot in thim jist loike pays in a pannikin, sure, whin we’re goin’ fur to make pay-soup, or pay doo, ez we used fur to call it aboard the owld Saint Vincent!”
Mr Osborne meanwhile had come up the side; and from where Mick and I were standing, by the mizzen-chains, I could hear distinctly every word he said, though I missed the first part, from Mick Donovan speaking to me at the moment, and he was in the middle of a sentence when I began to take in his words.
”—Must have been a terrible scrimmage, sir. One of the cutlasses seems covered with dry blood right up to the hilt; while the two dead chaps between the thwarts are cut about and carved in all directions. The lot of them, no doubt, were at it hammer and tongs when the flash came.”
“Begorrah,” whispered Mick in my ear, in comment on this statement, “it wor jist loike the two Kilkenny cats, sure, who fought till thaire wor ownly theer tails lift, sure!”
The commodore, however, took a graver view of the matter.
“It must have been awfully sudden, Mr Osborne,” he said; “and you think they were runaways or mutineers?”
“I’m sure of it,” replied ‘Number One’ significantly. “There are a lot of gold coins and dollars scattered about in the bottom of the boat, besides an open bundle containing a collection of watches and other jewellery; and, from the greasy pack of cards lying alongside these, I fancy they must have been playing for the plunder and quarrelled about the division of it!”
“Then the lightning came and settled the thing for good and all,” said the commodore solemnly, sinking his voice to an impressive tone. “It was the judgment of God!”
The doctor, after a very brief stay in the boat, came up the side again and made his report to our chief.