“A MASS OF MADDENED, SCREAMING BRUTES.”
“At daylight the seas swept across and filled up our decks. Then it was that Spartan measures had to be taken. The hatches were ordered to be battened down, thus confining in a death-trap nearly two hundred mules. We knew it meant death by suffocation to those that were still living, but our own lives were at stake, and to save our own the animals must be sacrificed.
“I am now writing in the chart-room. If we sink, I don’t want to be caught like a rat down in my cabin, although there will be no chance for life in any case if we go down.
“To make our terror worse the Austrian firemen have mutinied. They heard that the captain had given up the ship. They were right, for he told us to prepare for the worst. Think of knowing that we have got to drown! Our boats are all smashed and hanging in bits at the davits. The firemen tumbled up on the deck looking like demons from the underworld. Then Captain O’Neil showed his true nature. He became the hard, steel-like soldier. He sternly ordered them below, but the men did not move. The cowboys knew instinctively that without steam to turn the engines we must surely founder. Two of the cowboys seized the ringleader, and, placing the ends of a lasso about his wrists and thumbs, started to draw the rope over a guy wire, threatening to string him up by the thumbs. Captain O’Neil had turned away when these men took the prisoner in charge. Immediately the frightened crew turned and fled down to the stokehold.
“Who can blame the poor beggars? Life is as sweet to them as to us. Two hours later they came up again, but the display of an army revolver in Captain O’Neil’s hand caused them to retreat.
“The chief engineer, an Englishman, has gone insane. Thirty-three years at sea, and now he has gone to pieces! The terror of the long vigils at the throttle unnerved him. I passed him a little while ago; he was sitting in his cabin wailing piteously, his face blanched with terror. The little Scotch second engineer has been on duty almost every hour since the night of the 30th. His whole back was scalded by steam. Dr. Calkins bound it up in cotton and oil, and he is working as if nothing had happened, brave little fellow.
“6 a.m., Tuesday morning, October 3rd.—Another chapter in my experience of Hades. No one is on duty except the ship’s officers. It is a ship of the dead. I have just taken a look down the upper stable division, and the sight sickened me. The poor brutes of horses and mules, mangled and torn, lay in heaps, the live ones trying to extricate themselves from the dead.
“At last the typhoon has spent itself, and by to-morrow morning we shall probably be able to get back on our course and make a fresh start for Manila. Nearly all the horses and about two hundred mules are wounded as far as we can ascertain. Soon the hatches will be taken off, and we can learn the horrible truth.
“October 4th.—All morning long the dead animals have been hoisted out and thrown overboard. How horrible it all is! The men working in the lower holds are overpowered and compelled to come up on deck every few minutes. We have three steam-winches going. We found only one live mule in the lower hold. Captain O’Neil has been shooting most of the live animals, for they are beyond hope in their terrible condition.
“Captain Raicich told me to-day that for four hours yesterday he did not know whether the ship would pull through. The Siam got into the trough and could not be steered. He said he was prepared then for death. He said he has never before experienced such a terrible storm. We don’t know just where we are yet, as we can take no observations.