CHAPTER VI.

MR. BASSET DELUDED.

Noon was drawing slowly on; Ethel and Rose were still sleeping, when the tarpaulin, or spare mizzen-topsail, which had so long covered the skylight, was withdrawn from above, and a flood, it seemed, of sunny radiance, streamed into the cabin, the occupants of which saw the blue sky overhead for the first time these several days past.

"Below there, Captain Phillips!" cried a voice.

"Hollo! who are you that hail?"

"Bolter--Benjamin Bolter, sir."

"Well, fellow?"

"May I talk to you a'thout bein' fired on?"

"Certainly; come forward."

Bolter, the Canadian, appeared at the rim of the skylight, looking down with watery, bloodshot eyes, a pale, unwholesome visage, and a black mouth, furred by dissipation and squalor.

"What do you want?" demanded Captain Phillips, with a tone of impatience and authority.

"Pedro Barradas has sent me aft to speak to you."

"About what?"

"The state o' matters aboard, sir."

"Oho! you are coming to your senses at last, are you?"

"Perhaps so, sir," said Bolter, giving a covert wink, full of sly wickedness, to Sharkey, who stood near him on deck, unseen by those below, and with his tongue thrust into his cheek.

"Well--speak out!"

"Pedro Barradas is severely wounded, sir; his right elbow is knocked all to splinters."

"Glad to hear it; hope he may slip his cable in the turn of a hand. Which of his precious friends did this for him?"

"Mr. Hawkshaw, who has been knocked on the head and flung overboard, after a bit of a scrimmage for'ard."

"Well--well?" said the captain, impatiently.

"Pedro can't come aft, sir, so he wishes one of the gentlemen below to come for'ard, that we may all toe a line, beg pardon for what's past, and make some terms with you."

"Oho!"

"He says, sir," resumed the Canadian, in a whining voice, "that he would rather have Mr. Basset than anyone else."

"Why?"

"Bein' a gentleman as is bred to the law, for which he has a very particklar respect."

Mr. Basset grew a little pale on hearing this selection; but, knowing how important was the stroke that might be won by a little skilful diplomacy--

"I am ready to go--ready to meet these men, if--if--you think good will come of it, Captain Phillips," said he, while his mind became full of apt quotations from the Mutiny Act, "Shee's Edition of Lord Tenterden," and so forth, for the harangue which, mentally, he proposed to make the misguided and--as he supposed--now repentant mutineers.

"But we have no hostage for your safety, sir," urged Dr. Heriot.

"Hostage--safety--am I in danger, think you?" stammered Mr. Basset.

"The venture is not without peril. And why have they selected you?"

"As a legal man, and as a neutral party, I learn from what their messenger says," replied Mr. Basset, gathering courage as he thought of his commission as judge in the supreme civil and criminal court of the Isle of France. "Shall I go, Captain Phillips?"

"If you will venture, and can succeed in bringing back these fellows to a sense of their crimes, and of their duty, an unspeakable boon will be conferred on us all; but they must agree to put the leaders in bilboes, or set them adrift in the dingy, which they please. They must also give up all their knives, pistols, and other weapons."

"Of course, of course."

"See, my dear sir, at all events, what they want."

"There is one thing as we wants badly, sir," said Bolter, twirling his tarpaulin hat, and scratching his head; "and that is some brandy, or rum, we ain't particklar which; and a few bottles would go a long way to heal old sores."

"Some brandy?--granted."

"We have a gallon jar in the steward's locker," said Mr. Foster, the second mate.

"Then hoist it out."

Dr. Heriot anticipated Foster by opening the locker, when he soon found the jar, which he proceeded at once to uncork.

"Why, doctor, you don't mean to make it pay toll, do you?" asked Tom Bartelot.

Heriot placed a finger on his lip, as if to impose silence on the speaker, and, pouring out about a pint of the brandy, he substituted for it the contents of a large phial, a clear and pellucid fluid, after which he passed up the jar into the hands of Mr. Bolter, who received it with a very solicitous and affectionate expression of eye.

"What, in Heaven's name, have you done, doctor--not poisoned the stuff--eh?" asked Phillips, in a whisper of alarm; "what was that you poured in?"

"Morphia--strong morphia, and another powerful narcotic--nearly all I had, too," replied the doctor, in a similar whisper. "It will serve to throw some of them, at least, into a sound sleep, and thus enable us to overpower the rest, if need be. This will render us independent of their terms, their promises, and their repentance."

"Now, will Mr. Basset come on deck and meet Pedro Barradas?" asked the Canadian, in his nasal twang.

"Take care, my dear sir, that this is not some lure?" said Morley, interposing.

"Lure?" repeated Mr. Basset, turning pale again.

"A snare, perhaps."

"Aye--a regular plant--they're rum chaps, these Spaniards and Yankees," added Noah, sententiously.

"Nevertheless, I shall try," replied the good easy man, as he thought of his two poor girls, and hoped the time was almost come when they might be considered comparatively safe.

"You have your revolver, sir?" asked Morley.

"All right," replied Mr. Basset, slapping his breast confidently.

"Is it loaded?"

"Yes--of course."

"Let me see it, please?"

"Whew," whistled the doctor; "my dear sir, there is not a single cap on the nipples!"

"Bless me, you don't say so?" ejaculated poor Mr. Basset, who looked, what he really was, as little used to the handling of revolvers as to facing mutineers.

Heriot examined the six chambers, and found them all loaded; he capped the nipples, and gave the weapon to Mr. Basset, who concealed it again in the breast-pocket of his coat, and tried to assume a jaunty air, but failed.

"Now then, Mr. Basset, are you goin' to be all day of tumblin' up?" growled Bolter, stamping on the deck.

Mr. Basset gave a wistful glance at the door of his girls' sleeping-place, as the barricades of the cabin were secured, and then he ascended to the deck, with a heart that beat very fast indeed!

The dirty and disorderly state of the ship did not strike Mr. Basset's unprofessional eye, so much as the aspect of the crew impressed him, when he descended from the break of the quarter-deck, and walked forward to where Pedro Barradas was seated on the horizontal beam of the windlass, endeavouring to soothe himself by smoking, and in his rage half chewing the paper cigaritos, which his brother Zuares made for him; and close by was placed the uncorked brandy jar, which Bolter had carried forward, with a very triumphant expression.

Mr. Basset's heart sank, when he found himself among these squalid desperadoes, whose persons were now filthy in the extreme; their eyes were wild and wolfish in expression, their faces bloated, and obscured by sores and bruises; but still lower would his heart have sunk, had his eye detected the ominous noose that dangled at the weather-arm of the foreyard!

From his seat on the windlass, Pedro Barradas surveyed the poor gentleman, with wild black eyes, to which the glare of passionate hate and mental insanity, conduced by extreme bodily pain, imparted a terrible expression.

Enveloped in bloody bandages, his right arm hung powerless by his side. The fingers of the once strong hand seemed dead and livid now. His ear, which had been wounded by a pistol shot, was now a festering sore, amid which his coal black hair was matted; his bare brawny feet beat the deck with restless impatience, and spitting out to leeward the end of a paper cigarito, he showed all his white glistening teeth beneath his dark moustache, on the approach of Mr. Basset.

"Presto! come forward quick, you lubberly scribano," he roared out.

"You wish to see me!" began Mr. Basset, in faltering accents, for this mode of reception, and its tone, by no means reassured him.

"To see you--yes," said Pedro, while a spasm of agony convulsed his tawny visage; "Badger, overhaul and lash him fast!" he suddenly exclaimed.

On hearing this alarming order, the meaning of which he imperfectly understood, Mr. Basset was about to rush away; but the powerful hand of the gigantic Yankee was inserted in his collar, and others were busy about his person: thus he was speedily deprived of his watch, rings, and the revolver, the appearance of which excited a shout of derisive laughter.

Then, almost before he knew where he was, Bolter, the Canadian, had tied his wrists together with a piece of cord.

"Now, stranger, yew air fixed proper, I reckon--you air," snivelled the Yankee, with a broad grin; "Jeerusalem! yew air in an almighty fright!"

"He shall be yet in a greater," said Pedro, in a husky voice; "where is the line from the yard-arm?"

"Here," said Zuares, as a rope was suddenly cast over Mr. Basset's head, and looped round his neck--a rope which, while his blood ran cold, he saw came down from a block at the yard-arm.

"Lash another line to him for a down-haul," said Pedro.

And Badger did so instantly, by looping a rope round Mr. Basset's ankles.

"My God! my God!--my good men," he said, in trembling accents; "you do not--you, you cannot----"

"Mean to hang you, eh? Yes, but we do," grinned Pedro.

"Yaas--yaas, Massa Basset, we'll make you dance ebber so 'igh," added Quaco, with a yelling laugh.

"Silence, you black devil," roared Pedro, gnashing his teeth; "who gave you leave to speak here. Away to the caboose, and look after your coppers. Yes, Mr. Basset, we mean to hang you unless Dr. Heriot will come forward and dress my wounded arm. And more than that--unless your two girls come forward here among us, to ransom you. Do you understand all that, eh?"

Mute with fear, and the awful dread of impending death, and such a death--feeling all the futility of seeking mercy from the merciless--the unhappy Mr. Basset stood in a cold sweat before this demon of a man. He had but one idea prominent amid the chaos of his thoughts, that never more would he look upon the faces of his children.

"Pass the word aft that the rope is knotted and rove," said the inexorable Pedro.

Badger ascended the break of the quarter-deck, and peeping down the skylight, said:

"You below thar?"

"Well--hallo--what do you want?" asked Captain Phillips.

"Jest to say, friends, as Captain Barradas will string your precious judge up to the arm of the fore-yard in a brace o' shakes, if yew, Dr. Heriot, don't come forward and dress his wounded arm" (at these words, the proposal he heard of chaining him to the mast, flashed upon Heriot's memory), "and if yew all don't give up the tew gals you reckon on keeping for yourselves. If yew understand all that, yew had better be quick, yew had."

"Be off, you rascally Yankee, or I'll mar your seamanship!" said Captain Phillips.

"I hope to crop that rascal's auricular appendages before we part," said Heriot, in a voice not unlike a groan.

"Wa-al, lookye here, be quick, I say," resumed Badger, in a nasal twang, "for Pedro's in a very bad humour to-day, and there'll be an almighty airthquake aboard in another minute."

The words, the manner, and bearing of this fellow created great consternation in the cabin. More than once had Morley levelled the barrel of his pistol at Badger's head, but paused, with his finger throbbing on the trigger, and fearing to fire, lest, by doing so, he might jeopardise the father of Ethel.

"Are the girls coming?" said Pedro, in a low voice of concentrated passion and pain, when Badger returned.

"Never--never, assassin and coward!" exclaimed Mr. Basset; "destroy me, if you will--but--but--oh, Heaven!--oh, my poor girls!"

He hung his head and wept, as his voice failed him, in the excess of his misery.

"Hang the judge--hang him!" said the short, squat ruffian, Sharkey, as he danced a hornpipe with a vigorous double shuffle round their pale victim; "no doubt he hopes to hang us some day."

This idea was conclusive.

"Mercy! Listen to me, good fellows--listen!" cried poor Mr. Basset, starting wildly, as the rope began to tighten. "Mercy--save me, save me--Morley, Captain Phillips!"

Pedro's eyes filled with their most dangerous gleam. Despite the agony of his shattered arm, in his hatred of law, lawyers, order, and persons in authority, he almost smiled at the idea of thus degrading and executing a legal functionary.

"_Ahorcar! ahorcar!_--to the yard-arm with _el Senor Juez_! Away with him, and aft with the line!" he exclaimed, in a hoarse voice, as the crew tallied on and ran aft with a derisive cheer, and, at the same moment, Mr. Basset was swung strangling off his feet, and run, with a violent jerk, to the arm of the foreyard to windward, where the unhappy man, hanging, in strong convulsions, and in all the agonies of death, presented a horrible spectacle to Morley Ashton, who had crept up the companion-stair and peeped out.

"Oh, Father of Mercy!" he exclaimed, and sank almost fainting on his knees, incapable for a few moments of action or speech.

After hanging thus for several minutes, the body of Mr. Basset was lowered with another jerk, brought on board by the down-haul attached to the ankles, and, amid loud yells of derisive laughter, it was flung into the cabin through the still open skylight, just as Morley, deathly pale, and trembling in every limb, tottered back to tell what he had seen on deck.