Had he known that the captain was lying staring up at the sun on the hilltop among the dwarf palms, he might even then have made a fight of it, short of half the crew as he was.
It was not to be.
They went below—he and his guests, the third mate and the carpenter; the cooper was left in charge of the ship.
The boats and canoes came alongside at once, pulling hard. Suddenly the cooper heard a cry from a man in the waist of the ship that chilled his blood, while over the bulwarks swarmed the copper-skinned crowd, knife and club in hand. As he rushed to the companion, the tall renegade looked up and saw the time had come.
Then began the butchery. The ship's officers rushed on deck, leaving behind only the negro steward and a boy with the three convicts. Two shots were fired in the cabin, after which the three demons hurried up to join in the melée. In ten minutes there was not a man of the crew alive, except the cooper in the maintop, with a bloody whale-spade in his fast relaxing grasp. Brady and Bob were agreed "to give the old cove a chance to get eat up by the sharks," and ironically advised him to take a header and swim ashore. But the cooper, with his feet dangling over the futtocks and his head sunk on his chest, made no sign. He fell back as a streak of red ran slowly between the planking of the maintop and trickled down the mast to the deck.
It was a disappointment when the white murderers gathered in the cabin to find so small a quantity of rum in the Inga's lazarette. But they were consoled by two bags of Mexican dollars—"Money for the punkins," grinned Brady, which would buy them twice as much as they wanted when next ship came along. And then as the principal business was over, the harmony began, and amidst rum and unholy jesting, a division of the effects in the cabins was made, while unto Jack and his myrmidons were abandoned all and sundry that could be found for'ard.
When the heavy-laden boats had been sent again and again to the shore, a fire was lighted in the cabin by the tall renegade, and the white men pushed off. But it suddenly occurred to Messrs. Ridley and Brady that "such a hell of a blaze might be seen by some other blubber-hunters a long way on a dark night," so the boat was put back and the brig hurriedly scuttled. And you can drop a lead line close to the edge of the reef anywhere about Ocean Island, and get no soundings at forty fathoms.