"I see," said Mr Meldrum, who had now reached the man, taking his glass from his pocket and looking in the direction pointed out. "Yes, there is a small boat, sure enough. By Jove," he added presently, "I wouldn't be surprised if it were the missing mutineers in the longboat turned up at last! Look, McCarthy, and see if you don't recognise the _Nancy Bell's_ boat by the white streak below the gunwale."
The first-mate took the telescope and gazed intently at the approaching object for some few moments. He then turned round and stared at Mr Meldrum.
"Be jabers, it is the longboat, sorr!" he exclaimed at length; "and faix, sorr, I belave I can say that baste Moody lookin' out over the gunwale, as if tellin' thim where to steer, with his long black hair and ugly mug, and the cut across his hid which the cap'en giv him wid the butt end of his pistol! The murtherin' villin! won't I be aven wid him if iver he comes ashore, and pay him out--bad cess to him!"
"Are you sure," said Mr Meldrum, "that it is the long-boat?"
"As sartin as there's mud in a ditch, son--the divil a doubt of it!"
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
A TERRIBLE TALE!
By this time, the news having rapidly spread amongst the little community that the longboat was in sight, every one--save of course poor Captain Dinks, who could not yet move--had come out of the house.
The castaways were gathered together in little groups, some near Mr Meldrum and the first-mate, who stood by the flagstaff, others along the ridge which ran from thence above the beach, and the remainder on the shore; but all were intent on one object, and looking down the bay at the little speck in the distance that was said to be the boat, which was steadily making its way towards the creek. The tide was on the ebb and against its onward progress, although the wind was in its favour, so it approached only very slowly.
Mr Meldrum's first intention on having his suspicions confirmed by the mate's opinion, had been to haul down the flag--a little white ensign made out of portions of some old silk handkerchiefs which had been mustered amongst the party and sewn together by Kate; but, he dismissed the idea as soon as the thought occurred to him.
"No," said he to Mr McCarthy, belaying the halliards again, "it is too late now, for they must have seen it. Besides, what have we to fear if they do come? We can easily prevent them from landing, if we like, for we're nearly two to one against them in numbers should they try force; and we are stronger by far in moral as well as physical courage!"
"True for you, sorr," replied the first-mate. "It's a good larrupping they'd git, if they thried that on anyway. Bedad, I'd die aisy an' I could only give that baste Moody the bating I've had in store for him since he and his gang abandoned us, the dhirty schoundrels!"
"We must forget the past, considering we've been so mercifully preserved," said Mr Meldrum. "Perhaps it was all for the best that we were not able to leave the ship when they did."
"Maybe; but faix, they didn't have the dacency to ax us!"
"Well, we'll see what they have to say for themselves when we've a chance of speaking to them," said Mr Meldrum. "The boat's coming on a bit quicker now. It has got out of the set of the tide and has the wind well abeam, just the thing for that lugsail she carries."
"Sure and she's a smart sailer, sorr," observed Mr McCarthy after a few minutes' interval, during which time the longboat, which had been heading up the coast, hauled her wind and was steered towards the entrance of the little creek at the top of the bay, close by where the flagstaff was erected and the Penguin Castle people were on the look- out.
As she came nearer, however, it could be seen that Mr McCarthy's imagination had been quicker than his eyesight, for there was no one looking out over the gunwale--least of all Bill Moody, whose tall herculean form and peculiar visage would have been easily recognisable even at some distance off.
Indeed, there seemed to be very few persons in the boat at all, only two being observed in the stern-sheets, one of whom was steering with an oar, while a third was sitting on one of the forward thwarts attending to the sheet of the lugsail, slacking it out as the wind came aft occasionally, and hauling it in taut again when the sail jibed on the boat's head falling off a point or two through the alteration of her course now and again.
The castaways were all in a state of the greatest expectation and surmise, as the longboat gradually grew more visible and the small number of its occupants became noticeable; for, as she rounded the point of the ridge, those on the beach could now observe her as well as Mr Meldrum and the first-mate, who were by the side of the look-out man at the signal station on the higher ground and were the only ones able at first to see the boat.
"They look as if they'd had hard times," said Ben Boltrope, who was one of those who could now have a look at the boat, "and some of them seem to have lost the number of their mess."
"And a durned good job, too!" exclaimed Mr Lathrope; "the mean skunks, to scoot away and leave a lot of wemmen and children to drown, as they thought. They've well arned any troubles they've come by, I guess!"
"Poor creatures!" said Kate, who was standing near the American, with Frank, of course, the inseparable, by her side; "please don't say that!
If all of us only just got what we deserved, we should have a sorry reckoning!"
"Very proper, and just what I think," observed Mrs
Major Negus in a sort of condescending and approving way. "I do not consider it right myself to condemn others, and never do it on principle, for--"
"Thar you go agin, measurin' other folks' corns right away by your own chilblains, marm," interrupted Mr Lathrope. "It's allers what you'd do; and you never kinder give a thought to what t'other people would have to say in the matter! I guess you're a bit narrow-minded, excuse me, marm."
"Narrow-minded, humph!" snorted "the Major," highly indignant at the accusation. "The idea of the thing! to be sure, Mr Lathrope, I ought never to be surprised at anything you choose to say; your manners and conversation are so very--ah, well--elegant!"
"Much obleeged, marm, I'm sure," said the other, chuckling at making her angry. "I took fust-class when at school in the States for elegancy and deportment."
"I'm sure I wish you had stopped there!" retorted the lady; but any further amenities were arrested from passing between them by the nearer approach of the longboat, and the fact of Mr Meldrum and those with him coming down from the ridge so as to be on the beach when their unexpected visitors got in to shore.
Closer and closer the boat came, until at last its keel touched ground, when, slewing round broadside on, it was left stranded on the beach.
"Snakes and alligators!" exclaimed Mr Lathrope, the lugsail swinging aside and enabling him and the others to see into the boat clearly, a thing which had been previously impossible from the boat's coming up end on. "They air a ruin lot, mister! Of all the starved, God-forsaken critturs as I've ever seed they're 'bout the worst!"
They were.
Only the man who had been steering with the oar and the one who was on the thwart amidships were apparently able to sit up, for three other figures were observed stretched in the bottom of the boat in a lump together; while one was by himself in the bows, doubled up in a crouching posture, quite dead and with his ghastly eyes staring out sightless from the retreating sockets. The closely-drawn features and general appearance of this latter miserable object showed that he must have expired in the last stage of starvation!
"Why, this is almost worse than you were when we picked you up off Pernambuco," said Ben Boltrope to Karl Ericksen.
"Ja, ja!" replied the Norwegian. "It var sehr kalt, and we was expose as mooch as starve; but it vor bad, very, and so is dese, it remind me, oh! so much;" and he turned away his head, as Kate had already done, from the hideous spectacle, quite unable to gaze any longer at it from its association with his own rescue from a similar horrible death.
The men by Mr Meldrum's side, however--forgetting the past conduct of the survivors of those in the longboat and the fact of their not only having deserted them but even locked them below to drown in the hold of the sinking ship--rushed into the water, eager, in the common exercise of that humanity which is common to us all, but especially noticeable in English sailors, to relieve the misery that was so apparent, and to separate those who were living from those who had ceased to suffer; and, of all these Good Samaritans, Mr McCarthy, who had been so bitter in his denunciation of the mutineers, was the first to go forward, with Frank and Mr Meldrum, you may be sure, not very far off.
"Only six out of the dozen that left the ship!" exclaimed Mr Meldrum to the man in the stern-sheets, to whom he extended his hand to aid him in getting out of the boat. "Where are the rest of your number?"
But the emaciated wretch--who seemed to have suffered considerable bodily injury as well as want of food, for one of his arms hung down powerless at his side, and there was a broad cut across his face from some weapon--was as incapable of speech as he was apparently of moving.
His lips only worked feebly, without any sound coming from them, and he stumbled and fell forwards on his face when he tried to rise by the aid of Mr Meldrum's arm.
"Bedad, they're in a bad way, sorr," said Mr McCarthy sympathisingly, coming up and helping Mr Meldrum to lift the man out and place him on the beach, where he had already laid down the corpse that had been in the bows, throwing a bit of the sail over it to hide it for the time from observation. "The poor divil can't spake, sure. I wondther which of them it wor? I'm blest if I can make him out, and I knew all the men purty well, most of them being in my own watch, by the same token."
But just then, the stewardess saved him from puzzling over the man's face any further.
"It's Llewellyn, my husband!" she cried out, pushing Mr McCarthy away, and taking the almost lifeless figure he was supporting tenderly in her arms, oblivious of everything save of her natural womanly pity and love.
"The poor fellow! the poor fellow!" and she burst into tears over the miserable semblance of the man, who, coward and deserter as he had proved himself to be, had yet once been dear to her as her husband.
"Ah! then he accompanied them too!" said Mr Meldrum reflectively to the first-mate, as the last man was raised from the bottom of the boat and carried as tenderly ashore as if he had been one of their own party and a loved shipmate. "So there were thirteen of them altogether, instead of twelve, as I thought! That makes seven unaccounted for. I wonder what became of them!"
"Sure and the divil only knows," replied the first-mate laconically, "for Bill Moody, the baste, must be along o' them, as he's not with these here; and he was sartain to be will looked afther by the ould gintleman in black down below!"
"Hush!" said Mr Meldrum. "If he is dead, let him rest in peace!"
"Aye, aye, sort; so say I," answered Mr McCarthy; "and may joy go with him, for he was the broth of a boy!"
Bye and bye, when Llewellyn, the steward, recovered sufficiently to be able to speak, he had a terrible tale to tell.
On the outbreak of the row on board the ship, he said, between Captain Dinks and Moody, he was about to slip forward to join Snowball in the galley to have a warm, for he found it cold in his pantry; and, besides, he had no one to speak to there, and he felt dull and cheerless.
Frightened at the altercation and afraid of getting hurt in the scuffle that arose, he hid himself in the bows of the longboat; and, as luck would happen, he was there when the boat was launched and went away from the side of the vessel with the mutineers, for he could not scramble out in time.