The mate told Captain Barrington that there were plenty of rockets and
portfires aboard the schooner. A fireball by night might bring the boat
to the yacht. He then produced a piece of paper, and gave the commander
an idea of the quantity of stores in the little vessel.
'They'll want nothing from us, then,' said Captain Barrington. 'However,
since the mutiny appears to have been owing to the rottenness of the
food, sling a couple of casks of our beef into the boat.'
It was eleven o'clock when all was ready for Captain Parry to go on
board the _Mowbray_. Four men and a boy had volunteered as a crew, and
when the boat was freighted she lay deep alongside with seamen's chests,
luggage, casks of beef, and human beings. The passengers made a tender
farewell of this singular, most romantic leave-taking in mid-ocean.
They pressed forward to shake Captain Parry by the hand. Some hoped that
the blessing of God would attend his search. More than one lady raised a
handkerchief to her eyes. As the boat shoved off, a hearty cheer broke
from the whole length of the vessel. The boat reached the side of the
_Mowbray_, and all that was to be received on board was hoisted up.
Captain Parry breathed deep, and wore a wildness in his looks, whilst he
stood for a few minutes gazing round about him. Of course, he remembered
the little ship perfectly well--the delightful cruise he had taken in
her, with Violet and her father, a little while before he returned to
India. He looked, and began to realize the brutal scene as the girl had
sketched it in that last entry. It was hard to think of his immensely
wealthy friend Mr. Vanderholt meeting a mean, base end at the hands of a
brutal Ratcliffe sailor. What had they done with Violet? The little ship
seemed to smell of human blood. The airy graces of her heights, the
beauty of all that was choice and finished betwixt her rails, seemed to
have departed. Wherever murder stalks, the spirit of horror, attended
by the ghost of neglect and decay, follows. They break the windows of
the house. They command the spiders to build. The dirty little building
in which the body was found is going to pieces. The alley up which the
body was dragged is of a sickly green, with a growth of unwholesome
grass.
It was so with this yacht--this beautiful fabric, the _Mowbray_. The
wizardry of murder had changed her to the sight of Parry. He cursed her
with all his heart as the cause of the destruction of his sweetheart and
Mr. Vanderholt, and, wondering what the devil had brought her so far
from home, whether it might be possible that father and daughter had
been sailing to India to meet him, that they might return together in
the same vessel, he put his hand upon the fire-hot companion-hood, and
descended the ladder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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