"A cursed sight too long for me!" said Moody, interrupting him with a coarse laugh. "You aren't a going to come over us with your soft sawder, nor the skipper neither! I, for one, ain't agoing to have any more o' this slave-driving work! Why should we sweat our hearts out trying to keep the old tub afloat and drive her to shore, when we can reach there quite as well in the boats, without half the trouble? I votes for quitting her at once--what say you, mates?" and he turned round to the others, seeking their support.
"Aye, aye!" shouted several voices together with acclamation. "Let us have no more pumping or slaving; but quit the ship at once and leave the cussed thing to sink. To the boats! To the boats!"
Captain Dinks thought he had allowed the matter to go far enough. The time for action had arrived, and he was ready.
"Hold!" cried he, in clear ringing tones that penetrated fore and aft the vessel and which could be heard above every other sound, advancing to the top of the poop ladder and drawing a revolver from his pocket as he spoke. "The first man who touches either of those boats without my orders, I'll shoot like a dog!"
At the first sound of his voice the men had stopped speaking, and now there was a dead silence in which you could have heard a pin drop. Not a movement was made by any of the men--all standing still as if turned to stone.
"Do you know that what you are doing, men, is rank mutiny?" continued the captain, taking advantage of the occasion. "Return to your duty at once, however, and I'll think no more about it. What I am making you do is for the good of us all, and I wouldn't give you a moment's unnecessary work if I could avoid it!"
"But," interposed Bill Moody.
"Ah, I thought it was you, you scamp, ever trying to foment discord amongst the crew--a lazy hound, always grumbling and skulking, you're not worthy the name of a sailor--you are only a thing aboard a ship!
I'll soon settle your reckoning, my hearty!" And, little man as he was, Captain Dinks sprang down the poop ladder in one bound; and, dashing up to where Moody was standing, knocked him senseless to the deck with a blow from the butt end of the pistol which he held in his hand right across his temples.
"There!" exclaimed he, when the ringleader of the gang was thus disposed of, kicking his body on one side and spurning it with his foot. "That's the way I deal with mutineers! Now, man the pumps again, my lads, and set to work with a will. As Mr Adams told you just now, it will not be for long that you'll have to stick at it, for we'll soon be able to beach the vessel, and then your task will cease!"
Cowed by his summary treatment of Moody, rather than encouraged by his words, the men started pumping again, although without any heartiness, clink-clanking till daylight, when they were relieved by the other watch and went below, taking Moody with them--that worthy having regained his consciousness after a time, in consequence of the water in the lee scuppers, where he was lying, washing over him and acting more efficaciously than the application of smelling-salts or sal volatile would have done under other circumstances.
Before the mutineer went below, however, he turned his scowling face towards the poop, the blood all streaming down from a rather ugly cut on the left temple, and shook his fist in the direction of Captain Dinks, although the latter did not see the gesture, for his face was turned at the moment to the binnacle.
But, Mr Meldrum saw it.
"You'll have some more trouble yet from that fellow!" said he to the captain, relating what he had seen and telling how Moody looked.
"Pooh!" exclaimed the captain. "He's only a bully and a lazy grumbler; and all bullies and grumblers are curs at heart!"
"Ah," said the other, "but those sort of sneaking chaps are just as likely to knife you as not when your back's turned, though they would be afraid to face you pluckily, like a man."
"Let him knife away," replied Captain Dinks. "That is, if I give him the chance! I fancy he'll remember that little tap I gave him just now; and if he gives me any occasion for it he shall have another!" The skipper then went away laughing, but Mr Meldrum, from the vindictive look he had seen on the man's face did not think it a laughing matter at all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
THE BARRIER REEF.
As the light increased, the land in front could be seen more distinctly rising steadily out of the seal with the high elevated peak in the centre which Mr Meldrum had identified the day before as the Mount Ross marked on the chart. The mountain, however, showed now on the port bow; so, the ship must necessarily have run down a considerable portion of the western coast, after they had abandoned the idea of weathering the island on the port tack--which they had done as soon as they were alarmed by the sound of breakers, letting her drive to leeward--before the collision with the berg. This was a discovery which did not appear to give Mr Meldrum much satisfaction.
"It's a great pity," he said to the captain, "that we could not get round that northerly cape I pointed out to you, before the snowstorm and sea-fog set in! There were one or two good bays there marked on the chart, such as Christmas Harbour and Cumberland Bay, which have been properly sounded and have the points laid down; but of this western coast little appears known, and it has been only from surmise that the outlines of the map have been sketched in. I really don't think any exploring party has ever visited it since Monsieur Lieutenant de Kerguelen-Tremarec briefly surveyed it in 1772--more than a hundred years ago."
"And it might have changed a lot since then," observed Captain Dinks.
"Yes," continued Mr Meldrum; "for the French discoverer narrated all sorts of wonders about a raging volcano, with geysers and hot springs like those of Iceland; and if volcanic agency has been at work since then, no doubt the place is very much altered."
"If there is a live crater there, it can't be so very cold then, eh?"
"I don't know about that," replied Mr Meldrum. "Away in the north, I have seen boiling water freeze as soon as it was exposed to the outside air; so I don't suppose it will be much warmer here than we can expect from all accounts."
But, warm or cold, it was the only haven of refuge for the sinking ship, which slowly, and more slowly still, by reason of the stormy sea and shifting wind, the latter of which grew gustier as the morning advanced, made her laboured way towards the land in crab-like fashion--half sailing, half drifting, and burying her bows deeply every now and then in the heavy rollers she was powerless now to ride over, and rising again from the water so sluggishly that it sometimes seemed impossible that she would recover herself, but must founder, whenever she took a deeper plunge than usual.
Bye and bye, Mr Lathrope came on deck escorting Kate Meldrum; although our heroine looked more like escorting him, for he was very pale and appeared much thinner than before--if that were possible to one belonging to the order of "Pharaoh's lean kine!"
It was the first appearance of the American outside the cuddy since the accident that had crippled him, and he could not help noticing the altered state of the ship--having last seen her just before she encountered the cyclone.
"Snakes and alligators, Cap, but you hev hed it rough, and no mistake!"
said he to Captain Dinks, gazing with surprise at the broken bulwarks, which had been torn away when the masts went by the board, the wrecked forecastle, and the unsightly stumps to which the jury-masts had been attached, which now occupied the place of the tall graceful spars and neatly-braced yards, with the canvas smoothly stowed away in shipshape fashion, that he had left so trim when he went below that stormy night.
"Why, you're busted up entirely, I guess!"
"Not quite yet, I hope," replied Captain Dinks, smiling mournfully as he, too, looked around; "but, the old _Nancy_ has been sadly battered about. Ah, Mr Lathrope, if she hadn't been a stout built one, she'd have gone to the bottom before this!"
"You bet!" said the American, humouring this little remaining bit of pride the old seaman had in the ship he had commanded for so many years, a pride that was mingled with a sorrow at her approaching end, which he could foresee and mourn over, as if the vessel had been a living thing--"she's been a clipper in her time, and made a smart fit for it; but, the winds and the waves have licked her at last, same as they done me, when they squoze in my durned ribs t'other day."
But, the captain could not laugh at what the other had said as a joke about himself, just in order to banish the poor skipper's gloom. It seemed to him a sort of sacrilege towards the _Nancy Bell_ to liken her mortal injuries to the mere temporary ones of the American; so he turned the conversation.
"I hope you feel better now?" he said.
"Wa-al, I ain't downright slick and hearty agin, that's a fact; fur my innards got a'most druv into smash! But I'm picking up, I guess, and feed reg'ler; so I s'pose I'll do, Cap, for an old hoss, eh? Durned if I don't feel kinder peckish now. Hullo, my lily-white friend," added he, catching sight of Snowball, who was bustling about the galley close to him, for Mr Lathrope had gone down on the main-deck along with Captain Dinks, to inspect the damage to the ship more narrowly than he was able to do on the poop. "Ain't it near breakfast-time? I hope you've got something for us as good as that lobscouse last night: it wer prime, and no mistake!"
"Golly, massa, no time for um 'scouse dis mornin'--too busy bilin' beef; but breakfast in um brace of shakes," replied the darkey, grinning from ear to ear and showing his white teeth and full lips to great advantage.
"I'm durned glad to hear it," said Mr Lathrope. "Look alive, Ivories, fur I feels a kinder sinkin' in my stummick that tells me it's time to stow in grub. You're a prime cook, let me tell you, darkey, and hev done me a heap of good since I've ben aboard!"
"Glad massa like um cookin'," replied Snowball; and he bustled back into his galley with the intention of continuing to deserve the high encomium he had received from such an authority on eating as the steward had reported the American to be, while the latter proceeded to remount the poop ladder and join Kate. She, however, was not now alone, Frank Harness having seized the opportunity of seeing her on deck to come up and speak to her; and the two parted with some little embarrassment as soon as Mr Lathrope approached.
Towards mid-day, the _Nancy Bell_ had closed with the land so much that its features could be distinguished. A bare, inhospitable coast it looked!
It seemed nothing but a series of abrupt cliffs and headlands, six to eight hundred feet high--as well as could be judged from the distance they were off--at the base of which the waves thundered, sending up columns of spray, without any bay or opening into which they could run the ship with any chance of getting ashore in safety.
There was, certainly, a projecting cape stretching far into the sea, like an arm, to the southward, to which point the coast-line trended, and beyond that there might probably be a harbour of some sort for it was to the lee of the island; but then, the wind was now blowing from the southward and westward--the very direction almost they ought to take to give the point a wide berth--and thus, unless it chopped round, it would be utterly impossible for the crippled vessel to round the headland, save by a miracle.
Captain Dinks and Mr Meldrum looked at each other in blank dismay; for, the gale seemed to be rising again, while the sea got rougher and rougher every moment, and dark masses of cloud began to pile themselves up along the horizon to seaward. If they were unable to beach the ship soon it was but only too apparent that she would sink from under them in deep water, when--God help those on board!
Suddenly, however, when hope abandoned them both, there was a break in the dark sky just overhead and a bit of blue was to be seen, followed presently by a gleam of sunshine which sent a ray of comfort into their hearts and bid them not utterly despair. This caused one, at least, to pluck up his courage again.
"It is close on noon now," said Mr Meldrum, speaking cheerfully, "we had better take an observation, so as to see where we precisely are."
"And what good will that do us?" asked the Captain disconsolately; "no amount of observations are of any use to us now."
But he fetched out his sextant all the same, as well for the mere sake of doing "something" as to oblige Mr Meldrum; and taking advantage of a favourable opportunity, he "took" the sun.
"We're in 49 degrees 10 minutes south latitude," he observed after a short interval during which he had been calculating his reckoning, "and 68 degrees 45 minutes east longitude--if that information can help us!"
"I'll soon tell you," answered Mr Meldrum stretching out on the binnacle a chart of Kerguelen Land which he had brought up from the cabin, and marking on it the position of the ship with a pencil. "Yes, it's exactly as I thought just now. You see that headland, there to starboard? That is the promontory put down here as Cape Saint Louis; and if we can get round it, there, as you see in the chart, we'll find ourselves in a large sheltered bay, safe from the ocean swell, where we can run her ashore with ease. Why, it is the very thing! how providential it was that I put in this chart by accident along with some others of the Pacific I had amongst my papers! I didn't know I had it till the other day."
"Ah," said Captain Dinks, returning to the main question, "but how are we going to weather the point, eh? That's the difficulty."
"We may do it yet," replied Mr Meldrum, whose hopes appeared to rise the more the Captain seemed determined to look gloomily on the outlook.