During the struggle with the mutineers we had almost forgotten the presence of these strangers, and now found them not a league away standing across the wind to meet us.
It was a hopeless venture to meet them, but Mr Adrian preferred it to putting the Zebra about and running away.
“Let them come,” said he; “they can’t do worse than these scoundrels down below. Stand by the guns, gentlemen!”
We obeyed willingly enough. Had Mr Adrian only been a gentleman as well as an officer we could have cheered him. But the vision of his face as he gave the word to mow down his own crew stuck in my memory and robbed me of all the enthusiasm which his present courage deserved.
On we sped, and nearer drew the Dutchmen. Evidently they were cruisers on the prowl for an enemy, or sent to observe the motions of our disorganised fleet. Had we been a sound company we might have held our own against the two of them. But crippled as we were, with our guns unmanned, our ammunition lost, and part of our crew lying wounded on deck, while the rest were prisoners below, we might as well have hoped to capture Rotterdam.
Fate, however, determined our destiny in her own way. Just as we were coming about, and those at the guns were blowing their matches for a first and possibly a last broadside, the Zebra gave a sudden shiver in every timber, there was a dull growl, followed an instant later by a terrific explosion which rent the vessel in twain, and dimmed the sky overhead with spars and smoke, and set the ship reeling on her beam-ends. At the moment, I was in the act of firing the charge of the gun in my care, and remember nothing but the tremendous noise, and finding myself hurled, as it seemed, clear over the breech of the weapon out into the boiling sea.
Instinctively I clutched at a spar within reach, and clung to it. All else I saw and heard as in a dream—the ship heeling over further and further, and the waves leaping on her as she plunged down; the cries and shrieks of the imprisoned wretches who sought to escape from the consequences of their own desperate revenge; the sea strewn with wreckage and struggling swimmers; the first lieutenant’s dying malediction flung into the wind from the quarter-deck; the looming hulls of the two Dutchmen as they hung in the wind and watched our fate. All, I say, passed like a grim nightmare. What woke me was an arm suddenly flung across me, and the white face of Mr Midshipman Gamble looking up at me out of the water.
I hauled him up on to the spar; and the effort to keep him afloat, and save myself from his wild struggles, helped me to find my wits.
“Easy, lad!” said I; “you’re safe enough here. Keep quiet!”
The sound of a voice steadied him, and he ceased his struggles, and let me lash him as best I could to the spar.