“He interpreted what I said to the eunuch; Hadji then made some remark in an under tone, and the renegade, shrugging his shoulders, addressed me again.
“ ‘Monsieur Capitaine Miller,’ said he, decidedly, yet still with as much suavity as before, ‘you will confer de grand obligation to make de plain answer, sare, vidout de bagatelle. C’est bien malapropos à present,’ muttered he, taking snuff out of a gold box, and glancing aside at the two mutes, as they stood near Hadji’s seat, their small, serpent eyes never off of his face for a moment, and their jetty, tattooed arms folded across their naked breasts. Before I could devise an answer, groping in the dark as I was, upon gaping ground, two Arabs pushed into the throng, leading the mulatto by the collar. The fellow was terribly frightened, and looked round as if for some one to address, when his eyes lighting on the captain of the Tartar, he seemed to turn dumb as a mute at once. However, the fatal moment was not to be staved off longer, for Hadji, with a look of devilish cunning, drew a small golden whistle from the folds of his juma, and blew it till the cabin rang again; I started to hear a sort of scratching, struggling noise in the after-cabin, and the next moment some sort of an animal, between a rat and squirrel, ran through the crowd, cowering at the eunuch’s sandaled feet. A smile of triumphant malice played upon Hadji’s face, and the Frenchman, snatching up his sword, rushed through the group to the cabin-door. At that instant the thick gloom, which had been setting bodily down on deck for the last ten minutes, was rent by an awful glare of lightning, and, as the parted air collapsed, with a crash which made the ship tremble to her keel, I saw the Arab chief, standing, pistol in hand, at the door; the renegade reeled back against one of his men, while the redder flash of the pistol again illumined the cabin, and bounding like a tiger in its leap, cimiter in hand, Halel sprang over the table at the eunuch. The lamp was extinguished in the fray, and had it been the chief’s intention to escape on deck, perhaps he might have done so in the confusion which followed; for the lightning glared incessantly through the stern-ports, while the thunder, reverberated by the rocks, crashed over our heads in one continuous peal, till you’d’ve thought the hoary granite was piling over you. The first rush of the swell in the cove broke over the ship, deluging her fore-and-aft, as it heaped up in the strait in one tremendous surge, which tore the frigate from her anchor, and dashed her high against the rocks. The lighter craft fared no better, being swept from their moorings like drift wood; however, while the horrible work was going on below, the second mate had let go a second anchor, while the stern-hawser parted like pack-thread, and showing the head of the foretopmast-staysail, while some of them aft managed to get the spanker-gaff partly hoisted, and others jammed the helm hard down, the ship brought up with a surge which shook her in every timber; and, as you drew another breath in the melee below, where one man was contending with fifty, you heard the hurricane roaring over her mast-heads, like the rush of Milton’s legions to the field.
“I was thrust hither and thither, splashing in the water, nearly knee-deep on the deck, amid the clash of steel and the shrinking back of the Arabs, until a blade whizzed past my ear, falling with a dull ring on the head of some unhappy wretch, whose hot blood spouted in my face. Half blinded, I stumbled over a prostrate body, clearing my eyes as I brought up against my own berth, when another flash showed every object distinctly, and I saw the two mutes throw themselves before the eunuch upon Halil; then followed a deadly struggle from the mast through the cabins to the transom, during which Hadji’s shrill voice screamed to the executioners to use dagger or bowstring—then a heavy fall and a gasp—woman’s fearful shriek—and again you heard over all, the defying roar of the tempest.
“Torches, which had been extinguished by the wind on deck, were now relighted in the cabin, revealing a sight which was terrible to look upon. Three dead bodies lay on the deck, or across the table, besides that of the Arab chief, who had been thrice stabbed, and afterward strangled. Scarlet caps, cleft turbans, and pieces of rent apparel were washing about, with the fragments of the swinging lamp; while the table and the cabin partitions were reeking with gore.
“The Frenchman was dead as a door-nail when they raised him up, which was some comfort, though the three blacks had escaped without a scratch, except one of the mutes, whose hands were gashed with a dagger. The soldiers now closed the doors between the cabins, having first dropped the dead-lights, and after the eunuch came out, the bodies were removed out of sight in the sail-room, all except that of the chief, which was laid on the table, a dreadful sight, after the fever of the thing was past, since you could not keep from looking at the blackened face, with the eyes staring out of it, as if he were ready to start up again—the frown being still on the brow, though the orbs were glazed, and the arm hung nervelessly down.
“I shall never forget the feeling of satisfaction which arose within me—when some one threw the folds of a turban over the face—as I thought that every blow he struck had been home; only if he had cloven the eunuch’s hard head to the jaw, I had been almost happy, in a sort of religious submission to fate, as if all who loved too well on earth, must pay the penalty in some shape or other, at last.
“It appeared that the cabins had been twice searched before I was brought down, but Catherton had hidden the fugitives under a false bulkhead, so artfully contrived, that had not Hadji and the guard been so hard on Ben Hamet’s track after the attempt to assassinate the sultan had failed, they might have escaped detection. The little animal, which had revealed their presence, after all, was a pet of Zuma’s, a flying lemur from one of the Indian archipelago: woman-like, she had brought it away in her dress, and by the knowledge which black Hadji had of its habits, it was thus made instrumental in betraying the pair.
“Neither Catherton nor the steward were to be found below, after the murderous fracas was over. I had no particular desire to remain myself, as you may suppose, and no opposition being offered to the movement, accordingly I went on deck.
“The wind was now at its height, having blown every thing moveable off the poop into the seat which was breaking in awful rollers at the bottom of the cove, the squall having come from the north-west. The ship, with two anchors down under the lee of Muscat Island, rode safely enough after the first danger was over; but the Arab frigate was lying broadside on to the rocks, grinding to pieces, with nothing standing but her lower masts. She could plainly be seen, not only by the flashes, but by a strong phosphorescent gleam which pervaded the atmosphere, reflected, perhaps, from the sea, each gigantic surge sparkling with living fire, heaped up in the smothering foam of its crests, as it rolled down on the wreck. I could even see the brine pouring from her lower deck-ports, as she lifted bodily against the rocks, and fancied I could hear the despairing cries of her crew, as one by one, her heavy guns, torn from their tackles, were hurled across the decks.
“I had little time, however, to dwell on the sight, terrible as it was, for the carpenter and man-of-war’s man came driving the length of the deck before the blast, when old Charley shouted in my ear that the steward was taken with the cramp in the forecastle, and thinking he was going to die, wished to see me. Accordingly, I struggled for’ard, with a foreboding that the horrors of the night were not yet over. A knot of our men were standing in the waist, and I passed the Arabs crouching under the booby-hatches and the fife-rails, from the fury of the wind, which howled fore-and-aft the deck. I was about to descend into the forecastle, when Captain Catherton, with his Indian boat-steerer and three of the mates, came up on the other side. He waved me aft, shouting, at the full pitch of his strong voice, to the mates behind him, who held on to the windlass, and looked from him to me without moving a finger. However, the boat-steerer lifted a handspike, and his superior—who was now grown desperate, having received an inkling of my errand from the Indian—presented a pistol at my head, and pulled the trigger. It flashed in the pan; and before he could level another I closed with him, pitching him back into the scuppers, where old Charley and Frank lashed him to a spar, hands and feet. One word to the mates about his plan of running away with the ship, and I sprung down in the forecastle, where the mulatto lay on his back, raving for them to keep the captain back, while two of the men were rubbing his writhing body with whale-oil and hartshorn.