An exclamation of horror burst from Harvey as the boat, with its panting crew, dashed up alongside that of the chief mate.
“For God's sake, Tessa, do not look!” he cried hoarsely.
For the half-sunken boat was a shambles, and of her nine occupants only three were alive—the second steward Jessop, Morrison, and Oliver himself. The latter lay in the stern sheets with a bullet hole through his chest, and a smashed hip; he had but just time to raise his hand in mute farewell to Harvey and Atkins, and then breathed his last.
Morrison, whose spine was broken by a Winchester bullet, but who was perfectly conscious, was at once lifted out and placed in Atkins's boat, and Tessa, with the tears streaming down her pale face, and trying hard to restrain her sobs, pillowed his old, grey head upon Atkins's coat. Then Jessop, who was evidently still in agony from his broken ribs, one of which, so Morrison said in a faint voice, had, he thought, been driven into his lungs, was placed beside him.
Poor Studdert and the five native seamen were dead, some of them having received as many as five or six bullet wounds. Studdert himself had been shot through the head, and lay for'ard with his pale face upturned to the sky, and his eyes closed as if in a peaceful sleep.
The boat had been pierced in several places below the water-line by Snider bullets, and by the time Morrison and Jessop had been removed, and Harvey and Atkins had satisfied themselves that the other seven men in her were dead, she was nearly full of water—not the clear, bright water of the ocean alone, but water deeply stained with the blood of the murdered men.
“We must cast off,” said Atkins in a low voice, “we can do no more.”
As he spoke a bullet from Chard's Snider struck the water about thirty yards away, and springing up, he seized his own rifle again.
Huka placed his hand on the officer's arm, and then turned to Harvey and spoke in Samoan, gravely and with solemn emphasis, though his brown cheeks were wetted with tears.
“Let us take no heed of the bullets that come. Here be six dead men whose souls have gone to God for judgment. Let us pray for them.”