Jenny, Dolly, Susan, and the child were shut into their cabins, over which a guard was placed by order of Borupt, now ruler of the ship.
The situation of the prisoners in the semidarkness of the spar-deck, and of the wounded captain whose head could only be dressed with cold compresses, was a hard one. The boatswain was unfailing in his devotion to the captain.
Fritz and Frank and James Wolston were consumed by appalling anxiety. The three women were at the mercy of the mutineers of the Flag! The men suffered agony from the thought that they were powerless.
Several days passed. Twice a day, morning and evening, the hatch of the spar-deck was opened and the prisoners were given some food. To the questions that John Block asked them, the sailors only replied with brutal threats.
More than once did the boatswain and his companions try to force up the hatch and regain their liberty. But the hatch was guarded day and night, and even if they had succeeded in raising it, overpowering their guards, and getting up on deck, what chance would they have had against the crew, and what would have been the result?
“The brute! The brute!” said Fritz over and over again, as he thought of his wife and Susan and Dolly.
“Yes; the biggest rascal alive!” John Block declared. “If he doesn’t swing some day it will be because justice is dead!”
But if the mutineers were to be punished, and their ringleader given the treatment he deserved, a man-of-war must catch and seize the Flag. And Robert Borupt did not commit the blunder of going into waters where ships were numerous, and where he and his gang might have run the risk of being chased. He must have taken the ship far out of her proper course, most probably to the eastward, with the object of getting away alike from ships and the African and Australian shores.
Every day was adding a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, miles to the distance separating the Flag from the meridian of New Switzerland. Captain Gould and the boatswain could tell from the angle at which the ship heeled to port that she was making good speed. The creaking of the mast steps showed that the first officer was cramming on sail. When the Flag arrived in those distant waters of the Pacific Ocean where piracy was practicable, what would become of the prisoners? The mutineers would not be able to keep them; would they maroon them on some desert island? But anything would be better than to remain on board the ship, in the hands of Robert Borupt and his accomplices.
A week had passed since Harry Gould and his friends had been shut up on the spar-deck, without a word about the women. But on the 27th of September, it seemed as if the speed of the three-master had decreased, either because she was becalmed or because she was hove to.