The swaying figure on the bulwark-rail roared with maniac laughter.
‘Come down, or I’ll fire!’ shouted the forecastle sentry.
‘He’s mad! He’s mad!’ went up in the very thunder of noise from the mass of the convicts.
It was then that I heard Captain Barrett cry to the sentry not to fire; but the man did not hear; he stood at a considerable distance from the poop, and the roar of the convicts was in the air as the captain shouted. The soldier fired. I screamed with the voice of a woman when I beheld the spit of the flame and the blue wreath of the smoke.
‘Oh, Jesu!’ cried the convict. He turned slowly, as though to look at the man who had shot him, and fell backward into the sea.
The women behind the line of guards shrieked, and some of them fainted. My knees failed me, and I sank down in the horror of that moment, clutching at a stanchion of the brass rail. Captain Barrett delivered an order swiftly and fiercely, and the armed guard came with a hurried tramp to the brass rail, the outermost one on the left thrusting me with his foot to get me out of the road. Sick and terrified as I was, my wits were sufficiently collected to mark an ugly movement among the prisoners, an indescribable stir of figures, quick turnings of the face and eyes, as though the many-headed beast sniffed blood and saw its chance. It might have been that they were enraged by the slaying of the maniac, yet nothing more sinister, nothing more deeply tragic in its suggestions than that stir of agitation, those sudden, wild, eager looks and movements of the head could be imagined.
The man had fallen overboard on the weather side of the ship. The sailors assembled on the poop rushed to the rail when the man reeled and dropped; they shouted as they stood looking; the captain sped to the grating abaft the wheel and gazed astern there, calling to know if anyone saw anything of the man. Twenty throats were bawling: some saw him; some said he had gone down like lead; some that he had been shot through the heart, and that there would be nothing to pick up. Meanwhile the ship was sweeping swiftly and smoothly onward; the white brine spun in sheets past the quarters, and the ridged seas of the trade-wind beat their plumes of snow into showerings of spray against the coppered bends of the heeling vessel. The spread of canvas was great—the studding-sails were out besides. The seamen would have needed a clear deck to bring the ship to the wind, and the convicts still stood massed, covered and overawed by the soldiers at the line of the break of the poop—every man so grasping his musket as to be ready to take aim at the word of command.
The time was wild with confusion and terror; the sailors continued to shout as they looked astern. Some of the children were yelling loudly with fright on the poop; sharp, harsh cries resounded from the main-deck, where I saw the doctor thrusting in amongst the convicts, whilst a few of the men whom he had appointed ‘captains’ appeared to be shoving and pushing and marshalling the prisoners so as to form them into some sort of marching order for the descent of the main hatch.
Captain Sutherland came hastily forward to the rail and looked down upon the convicts. He then shouted to his chief mate, who was standing near a quarter-boat to windward.
‘Send all hands forward, Mr. Bates! Send all hands forward, sir! There’s nothing to be done!’ and he motioned significantly toward the main-deck.