“It is not much, but I am losing a good deal of blood.”
“The brutes—the unreasoning brutes!” muttered the captain. As he knotted the linen into a rough tourniquet the other asked:
“Shall I report to you when the first boat gets away, sir?”
“No need. I shall see what happens. When she is clear I shall bring the ladies to you.”
Pride of race helped these men to talk as collectedly as if the ship were laid alongside a Thames wharf. They knew not the instant the Kansas might lift again and turn turtle, yet they did not dream of deviating a hair’s breadth from their duties. The second officer went aft to carry out the captain’s instructions. Courtenay followed a little way, passing to leeward of the chart-house, until he reached his own quarters. There was no door on that side, but light streamed through a couple of large port-holes across which the curtains had not been drawn. He looked in. Elsie was leaning against the table to balance herself on the sloping deck. She held Joey in her arms. She seemed to be talking to the dog, who answered in his own way, by trying to lick her face. The glass was so blurred that Courtenay could not see that she was crying.
“Better wait,” he muttered, and turned his gaze seaward again. Yes, there could be no doubt that the almost unbroken swell within half a cable’s length of the ship promised a possibility of escape. There was no telling what dangers lay beyond. To his reckoning, the nearest land was twenty miles distant, but the shoal water might extend all the way, and, with a falling wind, waves once disintegrated would not regain any considerable size. It was a throw of the dice for life, but it must be taken. He indulged in a momentary thought as to his own course. Would he leave the ship in the last boat? Yes, if every wounded man on board were taken off first; and how could he entertain even a shred of hope that his cowardly crew would preserve such discipline to the end as to permit of that being done?
The answer to his mute question came sooner than he expected. He had been standing there alone about five minutes, intently watching the set of the sea, so as to determine the best time for lowering a boat, when, amid the sustained shriek of the wind and the lashing of the spray, he heard sounds which told him that the forward port life-boat was being swung outward on the davits. The hurricane deck was a mass of confused figures. The two boats to starboard, a life-boat and the jolly-boat, had been carried across the deck in readiness to take the places of the port life-boats. A landsman might think that medley reigned supreme; but it was not so. Sailor-like work was proceeding with the utmost speed and system, when an accident happened. For some reason never ascertained, though it was believed that the men in the leading boat were too anxious to clear the falls and failed to take the proper precautions, the heavy craft pitched stern foremost into the sea. She sank like a stone, and with her went a number of Chileans; their despairing yells, coming up from the churning froth, seemed to be a signal for the demoniac passions latent in the crew to burst forth again, this time in a consuming blaze that would not be stayed. Each man fought blindly for himself, heedless now of all restrictions. The knowledge of this latest disaster spread with amazing rapidity. Up from the saloon came a rush of stewards and others. Overborne in the panic-stricken flight, Gray, Tollemache, Christobal, the French Count and the head steward, not knowing what new catastrophe threatened, brought Mr. Somerville and the almost inanimate women with them, leaving to their fate those who, like Boyle, were unable to move. Some of the mob rushed up the bridge companion; others made for the after ladders used only by sailors; others, again, swung themselves to the spar deck by the rails and awning standards. Even before Courtenay could reach the scene, both the second and third officers were stabbed, this time mortally. He saw one of the infuriated mutineers heave the third officer’s body overboard—a final quittance for some injury previously received.
He emptied his revolver into the tumbling mass of men, but he was swept aside by the fresh gang from the saloon, and perhaps owed his escape from instant death by falling on the slippery deck. He was up again, shouting, entreating, striking right and left, but he felt bitterly that his efforts now were of no avail, and he bethought him that there was only one resource left. These frenzied wretches would destroy themselves and all others—so, if he would save even a few of the lives entrusted to his care, at least one of the boats must be protected. The struggle was fiercest for the possession of the two life-boats. By a determined effort the jolly-boat might be secured.
So he ran to obtain help from the few he could trust, from the tiny company of white men he had left in the saloon; he met them, a forlorn procession, coming up to the bridge. The all-powerful instinct of self-preservation, aided, no doubt, by the stinging, drenching showers of spray, had gone far towards reanimating Isobel and her maid, while Mrs. Somerville, a woman advanced in years, was able to walk, though benumbed with the sudden cold. Courtenay unlocked the door of his cabin. Elsie, her face pale and tear-stained, but outwardly composed, was yet standing near the table, and the dog sprang from her arms the moment his master appeared.
“Thank God!” she said, all of a flutter now that the solitary waiting for a death which came not was ended. “I feared I should never see you again. Is the ship lost?”