But the mutineers were now scarcely twenty yards from the vessel, towards which they were ploughing their way with unabated speed. The next moment they were under her bows; just as their oars flew into the air, we could hear a deep voice from the deck, sternly ordering them to “keep off,” and I thought that I could distinguish Captain Erskine standing near the bowsprit.
The mutineers gave no heed to the order; several of them sprang into the chains, and Luerson among the rest. A fierce, though unequal struggle, at once commenced. The captain, armed with a weapon which he wielded with both hands, and which I took to be a capstan-bar, struck right and left among the boarders as they attempted to gain the deck, and one, at least of them, fell back with a heavy plunge into the water. But the captain seemed to be almost unsupported; and the mutineers had nearly all reached the deck, and were pressing upon him.
“Oh, but this is a cruel sight!” said Browne, turning away with a shudder. “Comrades, can we do nothing more?”
Morton, who had been groping beneath the sail in the bottom of the boat now dragged forth the cutlasses which Spot had insisted on placing there when we went ashore.
“Here are arms!” he exclaimed, “we are not such boys, but that we can take a part in what is going on—let us pull to the ship!”
“What say you!” cried Arthur, glancing inquiringly from one to another; “we can’t, perhaps, do much, but shall we sit here and see Mr Erskine murdered, without trying to help him!”
“Friends, let us to the ship!” cried Browne, with deep emotion, “I am ready.”
“And I!” gasped Max, pale with excitement, “we can but be killed.”
Can we hope to turn the scale of this unequal strife? shall we do more than arrive at the scene of conflict in time to experience the vengeance of the victorious mutineers?—such were the thoughts that flew hurriedly through my mind. I was entirely unaccustomed to scenes of violence and bloodshed, and my head swam, and my heart sickened, as I gazed at the confused conflict raging on the vessel’s deck, and heard the shouts and cries of the combatants. Yet I felt an inward recoil against the baseness of sitting an idle spectator of such a struggle. A glance at the lion-hearted Erskine still maintaining the unequal fight, was an appeal to every noble and generous feeling: it nerved me for the attempt, and though I trembled as I grasped an oar, it was with excitement and eagerness, not with fear.