Max Pemberton - Murder Mysteries Boxed-Set - 40+ Books in One Edition

But Timothy McShanus answered this for himself.

“Indade and I do,” said he, “and no more disturbed than a man at a hanging. Set a dish of parritch before me and ye shall see. Faith, should I weep tears because one thief is cutting another thief’s throat? Divil a tear at all.”

We laughed at this splendid earnestness, while Larry went up to the bridge, and Timothy himself came up to me and spoke a more serious word.

“Ye are easier in your mind,” he said, scanning my face closely. “’Tis good to see it, Ean, me bhoy. Ye don’t think Miss Joan will suffer—now, do ye?”

“She will suffer, but only in her fears, Timothy. The danger comes later, when this is over. I do not think of it because I hope to share it with her.”

“Good God, ye are not going on board, man?”

“I am going on board, Timothy—that is, if my judgment leads me to believe it possible. I’ll tell you in half-an-hour’s time.”

He was too amazed to reply to me, and for many minutes he stood there, plucking at his iron-grey whiskers and whistling softly. The yacht stood by this time within half-a-mile of the great ship, and every furlong she made set the fascinating picture before us in clearer focus. That our approach would be observed or any notice taken of us, I never for one moment believed. Whatever cause of quarrel set those wolves at each other’s throats, they fought, it was plain, with the desperation of maniacs.

Taking my stand upon our forward bridge I could clearly discern a group of men defending the fo’castle, and another in ambush behind the superstructure amidships. A powerful glass disclosed the prone figures of such as had already fallen; while the intervals, when a restless breeze carried the haze of smoke to the eastward, permitted a fuller view of the spectacle revolting in its detail.

The villains were evidently enraged beyond all measure. I could see them in the death-grip, here wrestling as athletes upon a stage; there fighting upon their hands and knees, as savages who cut and slash at the face and head and heart in insurpassable lust of blood and life. But beyond this, the greater terror was to know that the ship sheltered Joan Fordibras, and that she must be the witness to this debauch. What could it mean to such a one to suffer that? Again I say that I had no courage to think of it. Our own situation forbade such thoughts. We were running right up as though to ram the leviathan before us, and the very voices of the combatants could now be distinguished by us; while the sunlight showed us the shimmer of the knives, the reeling figures, and the death agonies of our enemies. Had we been of the mind, we could have sent them to the bottom with a torpedo from our tube, and no man among us been a penny the worse for our temerity. But to such a vengeance as that we had no call; nor did we so much as contemplate it while Joan remained their hostage. It was sufficient to watch them as we would; to wait and hope for the first fruits of a tragedy so providential.

We had come to no agreement upon the nature of our approach or upon the limits which prudence should set to it. I left it to Larry’s wise head, and I could have done no better. A splendid seaman, he proved himself that day to be also a master of tactics which kept our yacht astern of the big ship, and crept up to her upon such an angle that risk of detection—at least until the fight should be over—need hardly be considered. Not until we were within a cable’s length of their poop did he bring White Wings to—and there we lay, rolling to a gentle swell, half the hands on deck, some on the riggings, the officers with Timothy and myself on the bridge; as amazed a company as sailed the Atlantic that day.

I have told you that the contending parties upon the deck of the rogue had taken their stands respectively at the fo’castle, and by the superstructure amidships. This seemed to point to the conclusion that the seamen of the ship had mutinied upon their officers; and Larry I found to be of my opinion.

“The hands have turned it up, and the dead-weight is going under,” said he, with an indifference to the suffering we witnessed that I had hardly looked for—“I shouldn’t wonder if you are responsible, sir. A thieves’ crew is for fair weather. Let a cloud come up as big as a man’s hand and they’ll run for port though Davy Jones takes the tiller. They’ve had enough of it—any man could see that with half an eye. And heaven help the Jew if he hauls his flag down.”

“You mean, Larry, that we have got on their nerves, and they can’t stand us any more. I shouldn’t wonder. They think we have support behind, and are waiting for a Government ship. That must be it—but if so, what do they want Imroth to do? Is it to run to port? They would hardly expect to land without trouble.”

“Men like that never know what they want, doctor. Did you ever see a Malay run amok? Well, I’ve been round the corner of a plantation hut when a yellow devil was taken with the idea that the exercise was good for him, and mighty quick I skipped, to be sure. That man wanted nothing in particular. It was an Eastern way of tearing up newspapers and smashing the crockery. Those fellows yonder don’t know what’s the matter with them, and they are going to cut up the Jew to see. I wish ’em luck, but I’d sooner be aboard here than eating macaroons on their deck, and that’s the truth of it. Ask Mr. McShanus what he thinks. Perhaps he’d like to put off in a small boat⁠——?”

I looked at Timothy, and saw that he was as white as the planks on which he stood. Viewed from afar, the spectacle had been one of fire and smoke and imagined fury. But proximity made of it a picture of savage bloodshed, revolting in its fury and gruesome in its detail.

One incident stands out in my mind, horrible beyond others, yet an example of many the day was to show me. I recollect that just as we brought the yacht to, a man tried to creep out of the big cabin amidships, which plainly sheltered many of the Jew’s party on the Diamond Ship. The seamen by the fo’castle spied him immediately, and one of them fired a pistol at him—it was evident that the bullet struck him in the shoulder, for he clapped his hand there quickly, and then trying to run to his comrades, he fell heavily upon deck. Now began a scene such as I hope never again to witness. The wounded man lay upon the deck, hidden from our sight, of course, but plainly the object of a violent combat.

On the one side were his friends making frantic efforts to drag him to safety; on the other, the frenzied seamen shooting blindly at the place where they believed him to lie, and so at once preventing his escape and the approach of his companions. Baffled in their desire to kill him out of hand—for the corner of the cabin amidships prevented that—they, nevertheless, so frightened him that he lay cowed like a wounded bird, and thus afraid to rise to his feet or to make any effort to save himself, one of the hands from the fo’castle crept round the superstructure presently and deliberately cast a grappling anchor over the poor fellow’s body.

In an instant now the sailors had their victim. How the anchor had caught him, whether by the flesh or by his clothes, my position upon the bridge forbade me to see; but I could clearly perceive the hands pulling upon the rope and hear the ferocious exultation which such success provoked. Yard by yard they dragged the man to his doom. A quick imagination could depict him clinging madly to the combing of the forward hatch, clutching at the capstan and the windlass, contesting every inch of that terrible journey at whose end a score of unclasped knives awaited him. For myself, I turned my eyes away when the moment came and shut my ears to the dying man’s cry as it rang out, in fearful dread of death, over the hushed waters. They had killed him now, and while their shouts of triumph still echoed in the still air, they flung the body overboard, and it sank immediately from our sight. Such was their vengeance, such the punishment for what wrong, inflicted or imaginary, we knew not, nor cared to ask.