CHAPTER VII.

LUX VENIT AB ALTO.

Pity for Mr. Basset, and intense commiseration for his two daughters, soon gave place in the hearts of his friends to a dire longing for vengeance on the treacherous authors of this new atrocity.

"Secure the door, Morley--quick, or they may be on us!" cried Heriot, as he threw off his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeves.

"There is no danger of their attacking us," replied Morley Ashton, panting and breathless.

"Why so?" asked Phillips, with an oath.

"Because these wretches are already busy with the brandy jar."

"All the better," replied the Scotch doctor, with a sombre frown. "Keep your pistols and the gun ready--pot the first villain who comes within range through the skylight. Poor Mr. Basset! poor Mr. Basset! Bartelot and Morrison, assist me, please; we have work to do--quick, before the ladies awake and hear us."

The body of Mr. Basset was laid on Captain Phillips's bed, and the hateful rope which still compressed his throat, together with the cord that secured his wrists, was cut off and flung away by Heriot's ready hand.

Blackened, swollen in features, and horribly disfigured, with protruding eyes and tongue, few would have recognised, save by his dress, the bland and smiling smooth-skinned, close-shaved, and rather florid gentleman of a few minutes ago.

"Dead--quite dead!" groaned Morley, as he hung over him; "my poor friend--oh, my poor friend! so kind--so gentle--so amiable!"

"What a fate his has been!" added Tom Bartelot.

"And who is to tell it to his poor girls?" said Morrison.

"Ethel, at least," whispered Heriot with a significant glance at Morley, "must be kept as long as possible in ignorance; after the shock of last night to know of this might have a most serious effect upon her nervous system."

"Papa, papa, speak with me, please!" they heard her soft, pleasant voice say at that moment.

"Say what you will or can, Ashton; but Miss Basset must not see her father yet," said Heriot, hastily; "the shock, as I have said, might be dangerous, for his aspect is terrible."

"Speak to me, dear papa, for one moment. I have had such a horrible dream, and all about you," she said again.

Amid the deep muttered expressions of rage and commiseration made by his companions, Morley, pale and trembling, tapped at her cabin door, and, opening it a little way, whispered that Mr. Basset was asleep, and must not be disturbed.

"Must not," she repeated with alarm; "is papa ill?"

"Oh, no; but----"

"But what?"

"Only in a deep sleep," he replied, with a sigh of bitterness, as he closed the door, fearing to excite her alarm further.

"Is this fatal outrage completed?--is the poor gentleman quite dead?" asked Captain Phillips, in a low and impressive voice.

"I fear so, I fear so," replied Heriot, with growing agitation; "I can detect no sign whatever of life, and even warmth is passing away."

"But remember, doctor," said Morrison, earnestly and anxiously, "that the time of--of strangulation was short, and death by being run up to the yardarm is not so instantaneous as by the drop from a regular scaffold ashore."

"Of course, Morrison, I know that; but----" the doctor paused, and shook his head sadly.

"Horrible difference!" thought Morley, with a shudder of mingled rage and grief, while he clenched his teeth and hands.

"But our poor friend was a heavy man and of a full habit. He is already becoming cold. No breath--no pulsation," added Heriot, placing his hand on Mr. Basset's heart.

"Quite dead, you think?" asked Morley, whose eyes filled with tears, as the memory of happy years long past, and sincere pity for the two girls, rushed into his mind.

"Beyond hope, I fear," muttered Heriot, who, however, still continued, mechanically, as it were, to feel the pulse and chafe the rigid limbs.

"The scoundrels--the black-hearted scoundrels! Oh, to have revenge for all this!" exclaimed Captain Phillips, stamping his feet on the cabin floor.

"Our numbers decrease. First we lost poor Manfredi, then Joe, the steward, then Sam Quail, and now Mr. Basset," said Foster, the second mate; "whose turn will it be next?"

"Hush!--remember the young ladies," said Heriot, looking up, warningly.

Cold nearly, ghastly pale, where not livid and discoloured, and rendered horrible in feature by past convulsions, poor Mr. Basset's case seemed, indeed, hopeless; yet Leslie Heriot, inspired by his love for Rose, by perhaps something of the dogged perseverance of his country, by the regard he really bore Mr. Basset, and an enthusiasm for his profession, with a reliance on his own skill, which was by no means small; imbued, we say, by all these, he felt inclined to attempt something unusual in his art, and proceeded at once to put it in practice.

As the idea of struggling with death, of restoring life and animation to that still and corpse-like form, occurred to him, a sudden light shone in the handsome young doctor's eyes; his cheek flushed, and there was a charming brightness and animation in all his features, as he bustled about, and unlocked the medicine-chest and case of instruments.

"At all events I will try, I will try," he muttered to himself; "in great attempts 'tis glorious e'en, to fail."

He perceived that blood oozed out from a cut in the forehead, received when the body of their victim was flung by the mutineers through the skylight into the cabin.

The sight of this blood gave him fresh hope, and he commenced operations at once, and with confident determination, while those around, who had never witnessed such a scene, or heard of such an attempt before, beheld him with wonder, and obeyed all his orders with alacrity.

With his love for Rose, and his medical enthusiasm, there mingled something of religious fervour and much of human kindness, and selecting carefully a lancet, he almost uttered a prayer of hope, as he opened the temporal artery, and then the external jugular--a vein which runs along the neck, just beneath the skin, and returns the blood from the head to the heart; but he sighed with doubt on finding the circulation stopped in both, and that a little coagulated blood only appeared at each orifice.

With the assistance of Morley and Tom Bartelot, he stripped the body in haste, and proceeded to rub the back, mouth, and neck vigorously, with volatile salts and fine oil.

When they grew weary, Captain Phillips and Mr. Foster relieved them, and the arms and legs were well lubricated in the same fashion, to restore and promote circulation.

Puffs of strong tobacco were blown up the nostrils and into the mouth, when these were compressed; but an hour and more elapsed without any sign of returning animation, and even Heriot was beginning to despair (as his companions had done long before) when, after making a small incision in the skin of the windpipe, through which, with his own breath, he sought to inflate the lungs, by breathing strongly through a cannula, a cry of joy escaped him.

The blood from the temporal artery was now trickling down the pale, discoloured face!

Heriot snatched up Mr. Basset's right hand, and applied his fingers to the wrist.

"The pulse--the pulse begins to beat!" he exclaimed; "quick, Morley!--place that bottle of sal-ammoniac under his nostrils."

Morley did so, and soon an exclamation escaped from all, on beholding Mr. Basset open and close each eye alternately.

He was then raised up in the kind and sturdy arms of Noah Gawthrop, while Heriot poured some warm brandy-and-water down his throat; after which a sound like a groan left his lips.

"Victory! blessed be God!" exclaimed Heriot, as he struck his hands together, and thought of Rose Basset, with her sweet loving smiles, and an honest moisture dimmed his eyes; "he lives, after all!"

"Thanks to your skill, doctor," said Tom Bartelot; "the world should hear of this."

"Nay--no thanks to me," replied Heriot; "what used we to learn at school, Morrison? _Lux venit ab alto!_"

"'All light comes from above,'" translated Morrison, without hesitation.

A low wail beside them made all turn from the bed whereon the body lay, and, to their dismay, they beheld Ethel standing near, pale as death, mute and rigid, her large dark eyes dilated with blank horror and bewilderment, while surveying the scene before her, as if she strove, but failed, to realise or understand it.