I had loathing at the thought of it, but might as well have put a pistol to my head there and then as to have refused. They bundled me into the launch, and I sat shivering at the prospect of the terrors on the deck; but they would not leave me when they came alongside, and "Roaring John" himself drove me up the ladder which was put out amidships. Seven of us at last stood on the bridge, and were face to face with the captain of the Bellonic, and four of his officers.
I have said that I feared the terrors of that deck, but the reality surpassed the conception.
It was a very babel of sounds, of groans, of weeping. The ship's surgeon himself seemed paralysed before the sight of the carnage around him. You looked along the length of the vessel, and it was as though you looked upon the scene of a bloody battle, for there were dead almost in heaps, and wounded screaming, and streams of blood, and fragments of wreckage as though the ship had been under fire for many hours. But above all this terror, I know of nothing which struck me with such fearful sorrow as the sight of a fair young English girl lying by the door of the great saloon, her arms extended, her nut-brown hair soaked in her own blood, while a man knelt over her, and you could see his tears falling upon her dead face, and his ravings were incoherent and almost those of a maniac. At the sight of us he jumped to his feet, and shrieked "Murderers!" so continuously that the echo of his cry rang in my ears that day and for many days.
Meanwhile another scene was passing on the bridge between the man John and the captain of the Bellonic.
"What do you want aboard of my ship?" cried the latter; and "Roaring John" answered him with a mocking leer:
"We've come aboard to hang you, to begin on!"
The men with the young officer cocked their revolvers at this, and I said in a mad frenzy which would not brook silence—
"You scoundrel, if you touch another soul here I'll shoot you myself!" for I had my revolver on me. "Do you make a business of killing children?" I cried again, and pointed to the dead body of the girl-child.
I don't know who was more surprised, the captain of the Bellonic, listening, or the man John.
"You cub," he cried; "if you talk to me I'll skin you alive!" But I said quickly—