Part 8 (1/2)
c.o.ke appeared to be dumfounded for an instant. Recovering himself, he ran to the starboard side, leaned over, looked down at a torn plate that showed its jagged edges just above the water-line, and then lifted a blazing face toward a point half-way up the neighboring cliff, where a haze lay like a veil of gauze on the weather-scarred rocks.
”You d--d pirates!” he yelled, raising both clenched fists at the hidden battery which had fired a twelve-pound sh.e.l.l into the doomed s.h.i.+p.
The _Andromeda_ herself seemed to recognize that she was stricken unto death. She fell away before the current with the aimless drift of a log.
”Let go!” bellowed c.o.ke with frenzied pantomime of action to Hozier.
It was too late. Before the lever controlling the steam windla.s.s that released the anchor could be shoved over, another sh.e.l.l plunged through the thin iron plates in the bows, smas.h.i.+ng a steam pipe, and jamming the hawser gear by its impact. The missile burst with a terrific report. A sailor was knocked overboard, the carpenter was killed outright, two other men were seriously wounded, and Hozier received a blow on the forehead from a flying sc.r.a.p of metal that stretched him on the deck.
The gunners on sh.o.r.e had not allowed for the drifting of the s.h.i.+p.
That second sh.e.l.l was meant to demolish the chart-house and clear the bridge of its occupants. Striking high and forward, it had robbed the _Andromeda_ of her last chance. Now she was rolling in the full grip of the tidal stream. It could only be a matter of a minute or less before she struck.
CHAPTER IV
SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF THE ”ANDROMEDA”
The island artillery did not succeed in hitting the crippled s.h.i.+p again. Three more sh.e.l.ls were fired, but each projectile screamed harmlessly far out to sea. A trained gunner, noting these facts, would reason that the sh.o.r.e battery made good practice in the first instance solely because its ordnance was trained at a known range. Indeed, he might even hazard a guess that the _Andromeda's_ warm reception was arranged long before her masts and funnel rose over the horizon. That the islanders intended nothing less than her complete destruction was self-evident. Without the slightest warning they had tried to sink her; and now that she was escaping the further attentions of the field pieces, a number of troops stationed on South Point and the Isle des Fregates began to pelt her with bullets.
Iris, when the first paralysis of fear had pa.s.sed, when her stricken senses resumed their sway and her limbs lost their palsy, flinched from this new danger, and sank sobbing to her knees behind the canvas s.h.i.+eld of the bridge. Somehow, this flimsy shelter, which sailors call the ”dodger,” gave some sense of safety. Her throbbing brain was incapable of lucid thought, but it was borne in on her mistily that the world and its occupants had suddenly gone mad. The omen of the blood-red water had justified itself most horribly. The dead carpenter was sprawling over the forecastle windla.s.s. His hand still clutched the brake. The sailor at the wheel had been shot through the throat, and had fallen limply through the open doorway of the chart-room; he lay there, coughing up blood and froth, and gasping his life out. The two men wounded by the second sh.e.l.l were creeping down the forward companion in the effort to avoid the hail of lead that was beating on the s.h.i.+p.
Hozier was raising himself on hands and knees, his att.i.tude that of a man who is dazed, almost insensible. Watts had gone from the bridge--he might have been whirled to death over the side like the unfortunate foremast hand she had seen tossed from off the forecastle; but c.o.ke, whose charmed life apparently ent.i.tled him to act like a lunatic, was actually balancing himself on top of the starboard rails of the bridge by clinging to a stay, having climbed to that exposed position in order to hurl oaths at the soldiers on sh.o.r.e. He had gone berserk with rage. His cap had either fallen off or been torn from his head by a bullet; his squat, powerful figure was shaking with frenzy; he emphasized each curse with a pa.s.sionate gesture of the free hand and arm; he said among other things, and with no lack of forceful adjectives, that if he could only come to close quarters with some of the Portygee a.s.sa.s.sins on the island he would tear their sanguinary livers out. It is an odd thing that men made animal by fury often use that trope. They do really mean it. The liver is the earliest spoil of the successful tiger.
The _Andromeda_, uncontrollable as destiny, and quite as heedless of her human freight, swung round with the current until her bows pointed to the islet occupied by the marksmen. All at once, c.o.ke suspended his flow of invectives and rushed into the chart-room, where Iris heard him tearing lockers open and throwing their contents on the deck. To enter, he was obliged to leap over the body of the dying man. The action was grotesque, callous, almost inhuman; it jarred the girl's agonized transports back into a species of spiritual calm, a mental state akin to the fatalism often exhibited by Asiatics when death is imminent and not to be denied. The apparent madness of the captain was now more distressing to her than the certain loss of the s.h.i.+p or the invisible missiles that clanged into white patches on the iron plates, cut sudden holes and scars in the woodwork, or whirred through the air with a buzzing whistle of singularly menacing sound. She began to be afraid of remaining on the bridge; her fear was not due to the really vital fact that it was so exposed; it arose from the purely feminine consideration that she was sure c.o.ke had become a raving maniac, and she dreaded meeting him when, if ever, he reappeared.
A bullet struck the front frame of the chart-room, and several panes of gla.s.s were shattered with a fearful din. That decided her. c.o.ke, if he were not killed, would surely be driven out. She sprang to her feet, and literally ran down the steep ladder to the saloon deck.
Through the open door of the officers' mess she witnessed another bizarre act--an act quite as extraordinary in its way as c.o.ke's jump over the steersman's body. In the midst of this drama of death and destruction, Watts was standing there, with head thrown back and uplifted arm, gulping down a tumblerful of some dark-colored liquid, draining it to the dregs, while he held a black bottle in the other hand. That a man should fly to rum for solace when existence itself might be measured by minutes or seconds, was, to Iris, not the least amazing experience of an episode crammed with all that was new, and strange, and horrible in her life. She raced on, wholly unaware that the drifting s.h.i.+p was now presenting her port bow to the death-dealing fusillade.
Then, from somewhere, she heard a gruff voice:
”Hev' ye shut off steam, Macfarlane?”
”Ou ay. It's a' snug below till the watter reaches the furnaces,” came the answer.
So some of the men were doing their duty. Thank G.o.d for that!
Undeterred by the fact that a live sh.e.l.l had burst among the engines, the oil-stained, grim-looking engineers had not quitted their post until they had taken such precautions as lay in their power to insure the s.h.i.+p's safety. A light broke in on the fog in the girl's mind.
Even now, at the very gate of eternity, one might try to help others!
The thought brought a ray of comfort. She was about to look for the speakers when a bullet drilled a hole in a panel close to her side.
She began to run again, for a terrified glance through the forward gangway showed that the s.h.i.+p was quite close to the land, where men in blue uniforms, wearing curiously shaped hats and white gaiters, were scattered among the rocks, some standing, some kneeling, some p.r.o.ne, but all taking steady aim.
But it showed something more. Hozier was now lying sideways on the raised deck of the forecastle; he partly supported himself on his right arm; his left hand was pressed to his forehead; he was trying to rise.
With an intuition that was phenomenal under the circ.u.mstances, Iris realized that he was screened from observation for the moment by the windla.s.s and the corpse that lay across it. But the s.h.i.+p's ever increasing speed, and the curving course of her drifting, would soon bring him into sight, and then those merciless riflemen would shoot him down.
”Oh, not that! Not that!” she wailed aloud.
An impulse stronger than the instinct of self-preservation caused the blood to tingle in her veins. She had waited to take that one look, and now, bent double so as to avoid being seen by the soldiers, she sped back through the gangway, gained the open deck, crouched close to the bulwarks on the port side, and thus reached unscathed the foot of the companion down which the wounded men had crawled. The zinc plates on the steps were slippery with their blood, but she did not falter at the sight. Up she went, stooped over Hozier, and placed her strong young arms round his body.
”Quick!” she panted, ”let me help you! You will be killed if you remain here!”