Part 17

The arms chest was brought into the cuddy, and the four of us who now occupied the after part of the vessel slept with loaded weapons at our side, and every half-hour during the night, at the sound of the bell, the cry, “All’s well!” went from sentinel to sentinel, and regularly at every hour an armed soldier, and one of the seamen under the eye of the mate of the watch—whether the boatswain or myself—went the rounds of the cuddy, pausing, listening, looking into the cabins to see that all was right.

This was precaution enough, you might think, with the addition of a cuddy-door sentry urged into exquisite vigilance by stern instructions and by fears for his own throat.

Well, after the doctor was found murdered, ten days passed, and nothing in any way to alarm us happened. In this time we sneaked across the equator, and our taut bowlines snatched some life for the ship out of a dead-on-end southerly breeze, with a short, staggering roll of foaming blue water and a heavy westerly swell. It fell out, by the revolution of the watches, that I took charge of the deck on this tenth day from eight o’clock till midnight. The military officers turned in at eleven. Mr. Barlow stayed to yarn with me, and our talk was mainly about the two murders, and I noticed that the mate still seemed to believe that it was the work of a soldier. He went below whilst some one was striking five bells—half-past eleven. I watched him pass under the skylight; he stood a moment or two looking up at the lamp as though he thought the dim flame should be further dimmed, then drank a glass of water and passed out of sight.

The boatswain relieved me at eight bells. I gave him the course and certain instructions, and specially exhorted him to see that the round of the cuddy was punctually made. I went to my cabin by way of the quarter-deck; a sentry stood posted, as usual, at the cuddy door, and I could dimly discern the figure of a second soldier at the main-hatch. My cabin was immediately abreast of the one that had been occupied by Dr. Saunders. Before lying down I looked to the brace of pistols we all of us aft now slept with, and then, as heretofore, peeped under the bunk, and took a careful squint round about....

I was startled into instant broad wakefulness by a heavy groan, the report of a musket, and a sharp savage cry as of a man cursing whilst he stabs and slays another. The report of the musket in the resonant interior of the little cuddy sounded like the explosion of a magazine. I rushed out in trousers and shirt, grasping one of the pistols; but I was not the first. Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Venables were before me; Mr. Barlow sprang through his cabin door as I ran through mine; the boatswain was also tumbling down the companion steps, and I heard the noise of the feet of the watch racing aft along the deck, and exclamations of the soldiers coming through the booby-hatch.

The figure of a man lay upon the cuddy floor between the table and the steerage hatchway, and beside him stood a sentry in the act of wrenching his bayonet out of the prostrate body. I turned up the lamp; the cuddy was fast filling. There was a universal growling and crying of questions.

“See to the prisoners, Venables!” I heard Captain Gordon say, and the subaltern shoved through the crowd to the door, calling for the guard.

“Turn him over. Who is it?” exclaimed Mr. Barlow.

I drew close to the motionless man on deck. Meanwhile the soldier who had killed him was standing at attention with his eyes fixed on Captain Gordon, and the bayonet in his musket dripping red in the lamplight. A couple of seamen turned the body—it had fallen sideways to the thrust of the steel, with its face upon deck.

“Stand out of the light!” cried Mr. Barlow.

“Great heavens!” exclaimed Captain Gordon; “it’s the prisoner Simon Rolt!”

_Simon Rolt!_ There before us on the deck, dead, with the thrust of a bayonet through his heart, with a long, gleaming sheath-knife firmly grasped in his right hand, lay the corpse of the man who had fallen overboard—whom we all supposed lay drowned at the bottom of the sea weeks ago—whom we had all as utterly forgotten as though his memory had been no more than one of the bubbles which had floated to the surface with his plunge! We could not credit the evidence of our sight. Then, indeed, the suspicion of some enormous scheme of treachery as concerned the convicts seemed to visit all in that cabin assembled, as though we had been one man.

“He’ll have had a confederate,” shouted a voice.

“He was for murdering the officers, and then the convicts ’ud have rose and killed all hands,” bawled another with lungs of storm.

“Silence!” cried Captain Gordon, and he questioned the sentry, who, standing bolt upright in a cool, collected way, told this story. Having crossed the deck, leaving the cabin door on his left, he happened to glance through the window into the interior, and saw what he supposed was a shadow cast by the dimly-burning lamp upon the head of the steerage steps. He shrank and put himself out of sight of it, though commanding it still, and presently he saw it stir and scrawl into the shape of a human head and shoulders. The sneaking subtle bulk rose clear of the steps, and noiselessly as the shadow of a cloud it was creeping aft into the gloom under the table when the sentry swiftly stepped into the door and challenged it. Up sprang the man: in a few beats of the heart his long knife would have been through the soldier; but the redcoat was too quick for him: the bayonet pierced the devil’s breast, and at the same moment the musket, which the soldier had cocked, exploded. The convict fell dead with a single groan, but the soldier in his rage stabbed him thrice to make sure of him, cursing him loudly as he drove the steel home.

Some seamen picked up the body and put it away in one of the cabins. The cuddy was then cleared and a wet swab brought along to cleanse the deck; but until dawn the sailors stood about in the waist and gangways talking. A quiet wind held the canvas motionless, and the ship stole softly through the shadow of the darkest hours of the night. Mr. Barlow told me that when daybreak came I must go into the hold and find out where the villain had hidden himself. The military men and the mate and I lingered in the cuddy in conversation.

“Was it Rolt himself who jumped overboard, or was the figure some dummy?” said Captain Gordon, who immediately added, “Oh, it must have been the convict. How could he have got aft?”

“I saw him jump. Many must have seen him,” said I.

“How did he get on board?” exclaimed Lieutenant Venables.

“I’ll tell you what’s in my head, gentlemen,” said I. “I’ve been turning the matter over; you’ll find I’m right, I believe. There was the end of the main-brace hanging over the quarter. I took notice of it as we pulled under the ship’s stern. That brace was taken off its pin and lowered by a confederate hand. I heard a low whistle sound through the ship before the man sprang.”

“So did I,” said Captain Gordon. “You’ll remember, Venables, I asked you if you heard it?”

“We’ll find out who was at the wheel that night when the man jumped overboard,” exclaimed the mate.

“Pray go on with your notions, Mr. Barker,” said Captain Gordon. “I fancy you’ve hit the truth.”

“Why,” I continued, “suppose the thing preconcerted, and Rolt with a confederate amongst the crew; the whistle signalled all ready for the jump; a few silent strokes would bring the convict to the end of the main-brace, and the rest signified merely a hand-over-hand climb, with the mizzen-chains as a black hiding-place till the ship was silent. I take it that the man got round into the captain’s cabin window; he found it open, entered, and strangled the commander, who probably started up on the villain entering.”

“That’ll be it certainly, gentlemen,” said Mr. Barlow, looking from one to another of the officers. “The convict,” he continued, “found the cuddy empty, and made his way into the steerage. But he would need a plan of the ship in his head to hide himself. Who’s the scoundrel amongst the crew that helped him?”

At daybreak the boatswain and I went below into the steerage. We found the after-peak hatch-cover off, whence it was clear that the man had hidden in that part of the ship. We again thoroughly examined the hold, but we could not imagine how and where the man had secreted his square powerful form so as to completely baffle our first search. We found a large cask about a quarter full of ship’s bread. The head was off and lying near. The boatswain thought that the convict might have concealed himself in that cask, heading himself up in it; and to prove that this could be done he got in, holding the head, which he put on when he was inside. If this cask had been the convict’s hiding-place it is certain in our first search none of us had meddled with it, or beyond doubt we should have discovered him.

And now to end this strange yarn. Mr. Barlow found out that a seaman named Mogg was at the wheel on the night Rolt jumped overboard. The mate and I—indeed, all of us aft—were persuaded that whoever stood at the wheel at that time was the convict’s confederate, because the main-brace must have been dropped into the sea and belayed by some one, who, standing near, could fling the rope overboard swiftly over the side without being observed. Certainly the brace had not been long overboard when the whistle sounded; Mr. Barlow or myself would have noticed it, wondered at such an unusual piece of lubberliness, and ordered the thing to be hauled in and coiled down.

However, that Mogg was Rolt’s confederate was made almost certain a little later on when some of the crew came to Mr. Barlow and me to say they had heard Mogg speak of Rolt as his cousin. He was put into irons, but was dumb for a month, then, swearing that the memory of the murders lay as heavy on his soul as though he had committed them, he confessed that he had agreed with Rolt to help him to escape and hide in the after part of the ship, of which he gave him a plan. They had twenty different schemes. One had been this of the convict’s jumping overboard when Mogg was at the wheel and the main-brace over the side. The opportunity they awaited came with several marvellous conditions for successful execution of the stratagem when the doctor on a breathless night brought the prisoners up in batches to breathe. Mogg said he had passed Rolt on his way to the wheel, and settled everything in a few whispers, and the signal was to be a long, low whistle. It was then he had given him the knife out of his sheath. The intention of the convict, as we gathered from Mogg, was to kill all the officers but myself; I was to be left to navigate the ship. He and Mogg reckoned that when the crew and the soldiers found themselves without commanders they would become demoralized, and allow the convicts to seize the ship. The seaman denied that he had tampered with the falls of the starboard quarter-boat.

We handed Mogg over to the police on our arrival, and they sent him in a ship sailing immediately to take his trial in England.

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Phantom Death etc., by William Clark Russell