Part 11 (1/2)
Some three or four and twenty corpses lay there, with the blood still slowly oozing in a few instances from wounds in various parts of their bodies.
The wounds were mostly inflicted by cutla.s.ses and pistol-shots; but two of the bodies, apparently those of officers, had the heads almost severed from the trunks, the gashes having been evidently inflicted by a keener weapon than a s.h.i.+p's cutla.s.s. These bodies had the arms lashed tightly behind the back.
Too horror-stricken to speak a word, I walked aft, Bob following me, and entered the cabin, which was on deck, and from which I thought I heard a groan issuing. On entering, the first object I saw was the body of a young man, about four-and-twenty years of age, lying close across the doorway, and covered with wounds. His left arm was almost completely cut through; a long gash had laid his forehead open from above the right temple to the left eyebrow; a pistol-bullet had entered his forehead nearly fair between the eyes; and blood had evidently flowed copiously from his right breast. This body lay across three others, dressed in the usual attire of seamen.
On a sofa, which stretched entirely across the after-part of the cabin, lay the body of a young girl; and lastly, under the cabin-table, lay another body, from which, whilst we stood gazing in speechless horror at these evidences of diabolical atrocity, a faint groan issued.
Bob a.s.sisted me to draw the sufferer from under the table; and we then saw that he was an old man, grey-haired, and dressed in fine blue cloth garnished with gilt b.u.t.tons, and a strip of gold lace round the cuffs of the jacket; no doubt the master of the vessel.
The cabin had, notwithstanding the ghastly appearance it presented, been the scene of a wild carouse, for the table was covered with gla.s.ses and wine and spirit bottles, and broken bottles and gla.s.ses littered the floor. I searched among the contents of the table until I found a bottle only partly empty, and from this I poured out a gla.s.s of its contents, which proved to be port, and managed with considerable difficulty to get a small quant.i.ty of the wine down the wounded man's throat. The skylight was open, and the air, coming down through it in a cool gentle breeze, a.s.sisted the wine in restoring him to consciousness.
He opened his eyes, and gazed round him vacantly for a moment or so, and then memory returned, and he burst violently into tears. We soothed him as well as we could, a.s.suring him that we were friends, and that we would not leave him; and in a minute or two he recovered strength and composure enough to speak.
”Thank you, gentlemen, thank you,” said he, ”but my time here is very short, and your well-meant efforts for my relief are not only useless, but they also increase my suffering. You are, I presume, from some s.h.i.+p which has come up with us since those fiends left. Kindly prop me up a little higher on the sofa, gentlemen, if you please, and I will endeavour to tell you what has happened before I pa.s.s away.”
We did so; and as we were making his position as easy as we could for him, his eye fell upon the body of the young girl, and once more his tears burst forth, mingled with prayers for her, and the most bitter curses upon her destroyers.
He raised one hand to his face as though to brush his tears away, and we then noticed for the first time--horror upon horror!--that his fingers had all been cut, or rather _hacked_ out, at the knuckle-joints, the wounds still slowly bleeding.
He saw our looks of compa.s.sion, and said, as if in reply:
”Ah, gentlemen, willingly would I have submitted to be torn limb from limb by the demons, had they but spared my poor Rose--my darling, my only daughter.”
After another short pause, he began:
”It was about midnight, last night, that we noticed a sail ahead of us, which was duly reported. There was not very much wind at the time, and she did not near us until about six bells. As she closed with us, her movements became so suspicious that I ordered the arm-chest on deck, called all hands, and served out the pistols and cutla.s.ses to them.
”Our suspicions were very shortly confirmed, for when she was within a cable's length of us she sheered suddenly alongside, and about fifty men leaped from her on to our deck. Our poor fellows gave them a warm reception; but they were all quickly cut down, and in about three minutes the pirates had the s.h.i.+p. They immediately began to plunder her, and a band of the most ruffianly of them, headed by their captain, made for the cabin. Seeing that all was lost, my son--his body lies at the door there--and I rushed in here, to make a desperate stand in defence of my daughter.
”The poor fellow killed three of them, whilst I severely wounded others; but he was shot down, and I fell, exhausted with the wounds I had already received. My poor girl was soon discovered and dragged from her berth.
”The chief then questioned me as to our cargo, where we were from, and so on; and believing that treasure was concealed somewhere in the s.h.i.+p, he mutilated me thus,” holding up his fingerless hands, ”to force me to reveal its hiding-place. We had none, but he would not be convinced; and when my daughter also denied the existence of any treasure on board, the villain deliberately shot her before my eyes!
”They then ransacked the cabin, turned out the lockers, and drank and sang, until the mate, I suppose, of the pirate came in and reported that everything of value was transferred to the brig; when the leader--whom I once or twice heard addressed as Johnson,”--Bob and I started and looked at each other expressively--”ordered the s.h.i.+p to be scuttled, and for all hands but those employed on the work to return to the brig. They then left the cabin; and, about half an hour afterwards, I believe, they left the s.h.i.+p. She cannot--float ver--very much--longer; but I shall-- shall be--gone before--”
His voice had been gradually growing weaker and weaker as he approached the end of his narrative, and now failed altogether. I tore open the front of his s.h.i.+rt to ascertain if his heart still beat, and now saw that he had received, in addition to other wounds, a shot through the chest.
There was no blood; but he no doubt bled internally. I could detect not the faintest flutter of the heart, so we laid him gently down on the sofa. As we did so, a small stream of blood trickled out of his mouth, he sighed heavily, and his jaw dropped.
Seeing that he was dead, we left the cabin, and stepped out once more into the bright suns.h.i.+ne. We noticed that, even during the short time we had been on board, the vessel had settled considerably in the water.
It was evidently quite time we were off; but we first went all round the deck, examining carefully each body, to see if any one exhibited the least sign of life; but all were utterly beyond the reach of our help.
We accordingly cast _off_, and returned on board the _Water Lily_, making all the sail we could, to get as speedily as possible away from the scene of such diabolical atrocities.
We were about four miles distant from the s.h.i.+p, when we observed her roll once or twice slowly and heavily; her stern rose, and, her bows disappearing beneath the water, she gradually became almost perpendicular, when she paused for a moment and then sank gently out of sight.
The moment that Johnson's name was mentioned, the same idea flashed into both our minds; that this was the same man, and probably the same s.h.i.+p, of which we had so lately heard. The captain spoke of the pirate vessel as a brig; and we felt no manner of doubt that she was the _Albatross_.
So, then, these men,--the men who had showed such base treachery to my father,--were still at large, and in full prosecution of their villainous designs. And not only so, but they were in the same quarter of the globe as ourselves, and manifestly at no very great distance.