_ CHAPTER NINETEEN.
"Here, this way," said Jarette, fiercely, "and now you'll see that I'm not a man to be played with. I'm captain here now, and it's obey me or--"
He snatched a pistol from his breast and held it menacingly toward Frewen, who flashed out at him--
"Put that thing away, madman, and show me my patient. Which cabin is it?"
"That one," said Jarette, surlily. Then showing his teeth, he said in a peculiar tone of voice--"They say it's kill or cure with your set; let it be cure this time, or perhaps it may be kill afterwards. Come on. Go in there."
He signed to a man acting as sentry by one of the doors well aft, and the man drew back while Frewen brushed by the scoundrel who held it open, and entered quickly, I following ready to do everything I could to help.
I entered that cabin fully expecting to see Miss Denning lying bleeding on the floor, and I am sure that this was Mr Frewen's impression; but to the surprise of both it was a totally different person, for there lay the captain in one corner, his head slightly raised, staring at us wildly as he held one hand pressed to his shoulder, and his eyes were so fixed that for the moment I was ready to think that he was passing away. But a faint smile came upon his face as he looked up at the doctor, and then he smiled at me.
I darted a look full of horror and sympathy at him, and then closed the door, while as I turned I saw that the woodwork side of the cabin was marked by a bullet, for so I took it to be, which had splintered the board all round a good-sized hole.
Mr Frewen went down on one knee by the captain, and took the hand which rested on his shoulder, pressed it, and then began to examine the injury.
"Come and help me, Dale," he said; "we must get him in a different position."
"Perhaps--I can help," said the captain faintly. "The scoundrel shot me."
"Don't try to talk," said Mr Frewen, quickly. "Wait till I have bandaged the wound."
But as he spoke I noticed how he watched Captain Berriman, and seemed to take special heed of him as he whispered the above words evidently with pain.
"Is it very bad, doctor?" he whispered now after Mr Frewen had been busy about his breast, and shoulder for a few minutes. "You can tell me, I can bear it."
"Bad enough, but not so bad as it might have been if it had gone an inch lower. But keep quiet, talking will only distress you, and tend to make you feverish. There," he said at last, "there will be no more bleeding, and that was the only danger to apprehend."
By this time the captain was lying in an easy position, carefully bandaged and apparently suffering less.
"He came in--"
"Hush! don't tell me; I know--as he did to us with inviting propositions. We heard your angry words, and the coward shot at you. But that shriek, surely it was Miss Denning's?"
"Yes," whispered the captain. "The bullet crashed through there afterwards and struck Mr Denning. Not hurt, but his sister shrieked on hearing the shot and seeing him fall."
"Then they are in there?"
The captain nodded.
"And can hear our words?"
There was another movement of the head.
"Then let them hear that we are trying hard to put an end to this miserable state of affairs. Mr Denning should be ready to help us if called upon."
There was a gentle tapping on the partition at this, and I was on my way to the bulk-head to reply, when the cabin-door was opened and Jarette came inside.
"Come, doctor, you must be done if you can find all that time for talking. Can you save him?"
"I am trying, sir, if only to be prepared to have a witness against you when the time comes for your punishment."
"Oh yes, of course, doctor, we know all about that. This way, sir. Now, boy. Come!"
"Good-bye, Captain Berriman," I said, as I leaned over my poor officer and pressed his hand. Then in a whisper--"Cheer up! Perhaps we shall re-take the ship after all."
Then I followed the doctor, and a minute later we were once more under lock and key, while as I crossed the saloon I saw that a couple of men were pacing up and down, pistol in hand.
I made a remark about this, and then I spoke about the way in which the powder had driven in all the end of the saloon.
"I suppose Jarette must have used about all there is now."
Mr Frewen shook his head.
"Didn't you know?" he said. "There is a large quantity on board. It is being taken--across for blasting purposes in New Zealand. Jarette, I suppose, helped with the lading, and knew where it was stowed. That accounts for its being brought out so soon."
"Pity we can't give them a dose of it," I said, "so as to frighten them into better order. Just fancy, Mr Frewen, dropping a bagful into the forecastle with a fuse attached and lit; how they would run for the hatch, and before they could reach it--bang!"
"Yes, with that part of the deck blown up and a dozen or so of wretched mutilated creatures lying about shrieking for help. Well, Dale, I dare say there is one of the bags somewhere about the cabins, but I don't think you could use it."
"Well, now you talk like that, I don't think I should like to," I said.
"I am sure you would not, boy. You and I could not fight that way. We must have a better way than that."
We lay there trying to think out some plan for the rest of that day, sometimes talking to ourselves, sometimes with Mr Preddle joining in; but for the most part he could talk about nothing else but his own troubles, and about his fish, which he was sure were dying off rapidly, for no one, he said, could attend to them like he would himself.
"Unless it was you, Dale," he whispered apologetically. "You certainly did seem to understand them almost as well as I did myself. Ah, I'd give almost anything to be out there attending to the poor little things, but I could not go at the cost that was proposed."
He sighed very deeply, drew back, and the little hole was darkened directly after, for Mr Preddle had lain down to meditate upon the sufferings of his fish, and when I peeped through at him a few minutes later he was still meditating with his eyes shut and his mouth open, while a peculiar sound came at regular intervals from between his lips.
Mr Frewen looked at me inquiringly as I turned round.
"Sound asleep," I whispered.
"Poor Mr Preddle," said Mr Frewen, "he is a very good amiable fellow, but I think that you and I must make our plans, Dale, and call upon him to help when all is ready."
I nodded, for I thought so too, and after listening for a few moments at the door, we came to the conclusion that there was nothing to mind about the sentries, so we proceeded to make our examination of our prison in a more determined way.
Several times my fingers had played about the knife I had in my pocket, and I had longed to bore holes in the cabin-door so as to watch the sentries; but of course I was checked by the knowledge that by making a hole through which I could watch them I was providing one by which they could watch us.
The cabins on either side of the saloon were only so many portions of the ship boarded off, and provided with doors, so that a couple of carpenters would have had little difficulty in clearing away the partition and making one long opening, but we had no tools, and the slightest noise would have drawn attention to our acts; and these ideas would, we knew, govern our actions in all we did.
Our idea was of course to get a board out between the doctor's cabin and Mr Preddle's, and if possible one at the darkest portion of the place close up to the ship's side; but examine as we would, there did not appear to be one that it would be possible to move, try how we would.
"It seems to be a very hopeless case, Dale," said my companion at last with a sigh, "unless we patiently cut a way through with your knife; one cutting, while the other keeps on throwing the chips out of the window so that they cannot be seen."
"But we shall make a big hole," I objected, "and the first time that Jarette comes in he will see it, and put us somewhere else."
"Of course. It looks very hopeless, my lad."
"You see we want holes, sir, so that we could take out one board from top to bottom quite whole, and put it back just as it was."
"Yes; but how are we to do that without tools?"
"I thought doctors always had a lot of tools," I said; "knives and saws and choppers for operations."
"Ah!" he ejaculated. "My head has not come right yet after that injury. Why, look here, lad!"
He went to a drawer fitted into a chest, and drew it open to take out a mahogany case in which, lying on blue velvet, were some of the things I had named--knives, and a couple of saws, beside other instruments whose purpose I did not grasp.
"We draw the line at choppers, Dale," he said, smiling; "and I suppose I ought not to devote my choice instruments to such a duty, but I think these will do."
"Splendidly!" I cried in delight, as I quite gloated over the bright steel saw. "Why, with one of those I can get a whole board out in an hour or two."
"Without being heard?"
"I didn't think of that," I said. "Let's see what noise it would make."
"No," said Mr Frewen, quietly. "We must wait till night; and it will be a very much longer task than you think, because we shall have to work so slowly."
"Wait till night!" I cried impatiently.
He nodded, and the dreary, slow way in which the rest of that day passed was terrible. It was as if the sun would never set; but Mr Frewen was right. There were two interruptions to expect--the coming of the man who would bring us our evening meal, a sort of tea-dinner-supper, and possibly a visit from Jarette to fetch Mr Frewen to see the captain.
The man came with our comfortless, unsatisfactory meal, at which I grumbled, but which Mr Frewen said was far better than ordinary prison fare; and just at dark, as he had suggested, we were startled by the sudden rattling at the fastening of our door.
Then Jarette appeared, and signed imperiously to Mr Frewen to follow him.
My companion frowned, but he rose and followed; not to obey Jarette, as he afterwards said, but to go and attend upon the captain.
I rose to go too; but as I reached the door, Jarette rudely thrust me back, so that I staggered to the cabin-window.
"Non!" he ejaculated sharply; and the door was banged to and fastened before I had recovered from my surprise.
"Never mind," I said to myself; "wait a bit," as I bit my lips and stood with clenched fists, thinking in my annoyance how much I should like to use them.
But I consoled myself by going to Mr Frewen's drawer and opening the case and looking at the bright steel saws, and then talking in a whisper to Mr Preddle, who came to the little opening to know whether anything was the matter.
I did not tell him about the saws after I had said that Mr Frewen had been fetched, but thought I would leave that for my companion to do, and then waited till he came; but he was so long that I began to be afraid he had been placed in another cabin, the mutineer chief having suddenly become suspicious of our hatching a conspiracy to escape.
He came at last, though, to my very great relief, and told me that he thought Jarette, in spite of his display of bravado and carelessness, was alarmed about Captain Berriman's state, and afraid that he would die.
"And is he in a dangerous state?" I asked anxiously.
"No; only a little feverish, as the natural result of his wound."
"That was what made you stay so long then?" I said.
"Well, no," he replied, with a smile. "I'm afraid I tried to impose upon our new captain by assuming to be very much concerned about poor Berriman's state; but I had another reason as well. I wanted to try and have a few words with the Dennings, whom I could hear in the next cabin."
"Yes; and did you?" I asked eagerly.
"No, I was too closely watched. I could have whispered to them through the hole made by the bullet; but Jarette was at the door all the time that he was not in the cabin watching me, and I could not say anything aloud for them to hear without his knowing what I said."
"I know what I should have done," I cried.
"What?"
"Told them what our plans were in French."
"That would have been clever," he said dryly, "for a Frenchman to hear."
"How absurd!" I said. "Well then, in German."
"Equally absurd, Dale. I hardly know a word."
"Well then, in Latin."
"My studies in Caesar and Horace never gave me the power to be conversational, Dale," he replied; and soon after, as it was now getting late, and from the sounds we heard forward it was evident that the crew were enjoying themselves, Mr Frewen proposed that we should make our first start at cutting the board.
Word was passed through the opening to Mr Preddle, who was all eagerness to begin, and asked for one of the little saws, so that he might work at the top of the board while we cut at the bottom; but Mr Frewen promptly decided that one of the instruments would make quite enough noise, and told him that he must understand that our task was one probably of days, for everything must be done slowly and carefully, and in a way that would leave no traces behind.
"Very well," said Mr Preddle, almost petulantly, "you know best; but I am very, very anxious to get out of this wretched cabin."
"So are we," said Mr Frewen. "Help us, then, by keeping guard by your door, and at the slightest sound outside giving us the alarm."
"Yes, yes; of course," he said eagerly; and directly after, in the darkness, I heard Mr Frewen open the drawer and the instrument-case, to take out the little saw which might open our prison, and cut a way into another for the scoundrelly mutineers.
"How are you going to begin?" I whispered, after listening at the door. "Shall I bore some holes first to make a way in for the saw?"
"They will not be necessary," he replied. "I can manage to cut a way across the last board but one."
"Why not the last?" I asked.
"Not enough room to work. I shall try to cut in a sloping way to splay the board if I can, so that it will fit better when we put it back--if we get one out. Hush!--don't talk."
I stood close by him, ready to help in any way he required, and expected that when he grew tired he would ask me to take his place, so that no time might be lost.
We had one advantage that I have not mentioned, and it was this. We were of course locked in, but there was a bolt on the door, so that we could secure ourselves on the inside from any sudden interruption; and by keeping the door fastened, there would be time to hide the saw and brush away the dust before any one who came was admitted.
My position was facing the little round window of the cabin as Mr Frewen made the first start toward obtaining our freedom; and as the saw began to bite at the wood with a sound like that which would be made by a gnawing mouse, I stood gazing out at the beauty of the grand tropic night. It was very dark, but it was a transparent darkness, with the sky within reach of my vision thickly spangled with stars, which were so brightly reflected in the calm sea through which we were gliding gently, that there were moments when I could hardly tell where the sky ended and the sea began.
Then faintly and steadily rasp, rasp, rasp went the saw, with so little noise that it did not seem likely that any one out in the saloon would hear it; and though at the first cut or two my heart began to beat with dread, a few minutes later it was throbbing with exultation.
For every gnaw of that little keen-toothed instrument sent a thrill of hope through me; and I did not stop to consider what we were to do, or what were our probabilities of success when we reached the saloon, for it seemed to me then that the rest would come. And on it went, gnaw, gnaw, gnaw at the soft grain of the pine-wood board, very slowly, but very surely, I knew; and I was just going to whisper to Mr Frewen, and ask him whether he would like me to take a turn, when the sawing stopped.
"Only for a few minutes' breath," he whispered.
"Shall I take a turn?"
"When we cut the bottom one. I am taller and stronger, and can get at this better than you."
Then he began again, and I gazed through the cabin-window, and listened both to his working on the thick board, and for any sound which might indicate that a sentry had taken alarm.
But all was silent; and comforting myself with the belief that if the noise was heard it might be taken for the gnawing of a rat, I listened and watched the stars.
At last I was in such a state of nervous excitement that I was on the point of begging my companion, to let me take a turn, when from being so intensely hot I suddenly turned speechless and cold. For it suddenly occurred to me that the stars were blotted out, and that the night was blacker.
"A cloud," I said to myself at first, but even as I thought that, I felt that it could not be; and at last I was lifting my hand to touch Mr Frewen, and draw his attention to the strange phenomenon, when the sawing suddenly ceased. My companion drew a long breath; and at the same moment, as I felt drawn toward the window by some strange attraction, to try and make out why it was so dark, there was the sound of another deep breath, and I felt it hot and strange right in my face, as in a hoarse whisper some one said--
"How are you getting on?" _