CHAPTER VI
At sunrise the three boats were all within a half-mile of each other, floating upon a smooth sea of the deepest blue. Overhead the vault of heaven was unflecked by a single cloud, though far away on the eastern sea-rim a faintly curling bank gave promise of a breeze before the sun rose much higher.
At a signal from Oliver the second mate pulled up, and he, Harvey, and the chief mate again held a brief consultation. Then Harvey went back to Oliver, and both boats came together, rowing in company alongside that of the captain's, no one speaking, and all feeling that sense of something impending, born of a sudden silence.
The captain's boat was steered by Huka, the Savage Islander; Hendry himself was sitting beside Chard in the stern sheets, Morrison and Studdert amidships amidst the native crew, whose faces were sullen and lowering, for in the bottom of the boat one of their number, who had been shot in the stomach by either the captain or Chard, was dying.
Hendry's always forbidding face was even more lowering than usual as his eyes turned upon the chief officer. Chard, whose head was bound up in a bloodstained handkerchief, smiled in his frank, jovial manner as he rose, lifted his cap to Tessa, and nodded pleasantly to Oliver and Harvey.
“What are your orders, sir?” asked the chief mate addressing the captain.
Hendry gave him a look of murderous hatred, and his utterance almost choked him as he replied—
“I shall give my orders presently. But where are the other firemen—five of them are missing.”
“Six of them rushed this boat,” answered the mate quietly; “two of them—those scoundrels there,” and he pointed to the two in Hendry's boat, “let the after fall go by the run, and drowned the others.”
“I hold you responsible for the death of those men,” said Hendry vindictively.