PAGE 8
The Rock
by
“The skipper looked up at me and got the bullet, fairly in the face, I think, but I never was sure just where I hit him. He dropped, however, and lay still, while the two mates made a dive for the forward companion.
“Macklin got in; but not so Parker. The enraged men caught him just outside the door, slammed in his face by Macklin, and I had one glimpse of him as I scrambled in along the footrope. He was in the center of a circle of flourishing sheath knives, his voice of command nearly silenced by the vengeful shouts and oaths of the men, and when I looked again, as I dropped into the rigging, he was prone on his back, while the men were surging aft to enter the cabin by the after companion. But Macklin was ahead of them, and had bolted it as he had the other.
“I descended and mounted to the poop.
“‘Ye’ll have to take command, sir,’ said a big, red-eyed fellow, named Finnegan. ‘Yer the shipped sicond mate, an’ it b’langs to ye.’
“‘Is the skipper dead?’ I asked.
“‘Dead, as he ought to be, the murderer! Ye did well, sir!’
“‘And Mr. Parker?’ I glanced at the quiet, bleeding form at my feet.
“‘He’s in small pieces, hild togither be his bones.’
“‘Not a pleasant prospect for me,’ I said; ‘but I’m in for it, same as all of us. We’ll have to stand trial; for there’s no escape. But there’s a rat down in his hole that we’ll have to catch. Look out, or he’ll pot one of you through his window!’
“I spoke at random, yet none too soon. A pistol exploded in the mate’s window, and a man went down, shot through the heart–the last one to join the rush over to starboard. But the rush continued to the capstan bar rack amidships, and, armed with these handy clubs, they came back to batter in the companion. Macklin did not fire again, and I was on the point of asking him out, to surrender on terms of amnesty and deposition, when a crashing, grinding jar shook the ship from bow to stern, and all three topgallant masts went out of her, snapping at the caps and falling forward. We had struck a rock in midocean.
“There was no more thought of Macklin. As we jumped to the main deck and ran forward like sheep, the jars and jolts were resumed, working aft, while the ship reeled far over to leeward. Chips was on deck, and I got him to sound the well. ‘Four feet, and coming in fast!’ he called, and the men rushed for the boats on the forward house, while I went aft to the wheel. I had never heard of a rock in this part of the Atlantic, and thought for a moment that we might have hit a submerged derelict; but soon put that thought away; nothing but solid and jagged rock could so tear into a ship’s bottom.
“‘No steerage way, sir,’ said the man at the wheel. ‘She’s fallen off due south.’
“‘Drop your wheel,’ I said, ‘and lend a hand with the boats.’
“I waited a few moments before following him, looking around at the prospect. Since I had gone aloft the wind had hauled to the north and died down to a gentle breeze, which barely ruffled the very slight ground swell. It was not the pressure of this wind that had driven the ship over the rock until she hung, pivoted, at a point near the stern; it was the ship’s momentum. The wind, however, had swung her head to the south, and it was bringing down on us a cold, damp fog out of the north, which already had shut out the moon and rendered indistinct the forms of the men at work on the boats. I could see, however, that the bow had settled nearly under, and knew that it was only a question of moments when the ship would slide, head first, down the declivity. I ran forward, and just as I started a report rang out from the after companion and a bullet furrowed my hair. I had forgotten Macklin, but had moved just in time.