 CHAPTER XI OF THE FANTOM DEATH AND OTHER STORIES THE TRANSPORT PALLISTINE In the spring of 1853, the hired transport Palestine, which had been fitting out at Deppford for the reception of a number of convicts, was reported to the Admiralty as ready for sea. The burden of the Palestine was 680 tons, and the number of felons she had been equipped to accommodate in her tween decks was 120. My name is John Barker, and I was second mate of that ship. The commander was Captain Wickham and her chief officer, Joseph Barlow. The Palestine was an old-fashioned craft, scarcely fit for the work she had been hired for. Official selection, however, was probably influenced by the owner's low tender. Good stout ships got four pounds, seven shillings, six pence per ton. And I believe the Palestine was hired for three pounds fifteen shillings. A guard from Chatham came aboard whilst we were at Deppford, consisting of a sergeant and ten privates, under the command of Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Venables. Shortly afterwards Dr. Sanders, R. N., who was looking out as a surgeon in charge of the convicts, took up his quarters in the Cuddy. On the day following the arrival of the doctor and the guard, we received instructions to proceed to Woolwich and more alongside that well-known prison-hulk HMS Warrior. It was a gloomy, melancholy day. The air was full of dark vapor, and the broad grey stream of the river ran with a gleam of grease betwixt the grimy shores. A chill wind blew softly, and vessels of all sorts, to the weak impulse of their wings of brown or pallid canvas, dulled by the thickness sneaked soundlessly by on keels which seemed to ooze through a breast of soup. I had often looked at the old warrior in my coming and going, but never had I thought her so grimy and desolate as on this day. A penant blue languidly from a pole-mast amid ships. She was heaped up forward into absolute hideousness by box-shaped structures. Some traces of her old grandeur were visible in a faded bravery of guilt and carving about her quarters and a huge square of stern, where the windows of the official's cabins glimmered with something of brightness over the sluggish tremble of wake which the stream ran to a scope of a dozen vathums astern of her rudder. All was silent aboard her. I looked along the rows of heavily graded ports which long ago had grinned with artillery, and observed no signs of life. Indeed, at the time when we moored alongside most of the criminals were ashore at their forced labor, and those who remained in the ship were caverned deep out of sight hard at work at benches, lasts, and the like in the gloomy bowels of the old giantus. The Palestine sat like a long boat beside that towering fabric of prison hulk. We were no beauty, as I have said, and the little vessel's decks were now rendered distressingly unsightly by strong barricades, one forward of the four mast, leaving a space betwixt it and the front of the top-gallon four-castle, and the other a little abaft of the main mast so as to admit of some area of quarter-deck between it and the cavern front. Each barricade was furnished with a gate. The main hatch was fortified by oak stanchions thick-studded with iron nails, the foot of them secured to the lower deck. This timber arrangement resembled a cage with a narrow door through which one man could only pass at a time. The main hatch was further protected by a cover resembling a huge, roofless sentry box. To this were attached planks of heavy scantling, forming a passage which went about ten feet forward. There was a door at the end of this passage, always guarded by a sentry with loaded musket and fixed bayonet. The convicts came aboard at nine o'clock in the morning following the day of our arrival alongside the hulk. We were to receive our whole draft of one hundred twenty at once from the warrior and then proceed. I stood in the waste and watched the prisoners come over the side. It was an old world picture, and the like of it will never again be seen. The day was a sullen as that which had gone before. The tall spars and black lines of rigging of our ship glistened with dripping moisture. A guard of six soldiers were drawn up along the front of the poop commanding the quarter-deck. Each bayonet soared above the motionless shoulder like a thin blue flame. Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Venables stood near the men. At the break of the poop, grasping the brass rail, Dr. Sanders scrutinizing the convicts with a severe, almost scowling face as they arrived. The unhappy wretches were heavily fettered, and the long chains attached to the leg irons clanked with a strange effect upon the hearing as the heavy tread of the many feet awoke a low thunder in the hollow deck. They were marched directly to their quarters in the tween decks. I observed their faces as they passed through the hatch and was struck by a general expression of light-heartedness as though they were overjoyed at getting away from the horrors of the prison hulk and the spirit-breaking labor ashore, with a bright chance of fortune in the sunny lands beyond the seas to which the ship was bound. And certainly the convict in those days was out in a way more tenderly dealt with than were the greater mass of the poor honest emigrants. They were well clothed and better fed than the sailors in the Forecastle. Those who were ignorant were taught to read and write. They were prayed for and eloquently admonished, and their health was rendered a matter of sincere concern to both the skipper and the doctor in charge. I recollect that the felons in our ship were dressed in coarse-gray jackets and trousers, red stripes in the cloth, scotch caps, and gray stockings, and the ship's number of the criminal was painted on a square yellow ground, on the arm and back. On the afternoon of the day of embarkation a tug took us in tow, and we went away downriver on a straight course for dungness, where the steamer cast us adrift. While we were clear of soundings I saw little of the convicts. We met with very heavy weather, and most of the prisoners lay as seasick as young ladies in their gloomy quarters. I had occasion once in this time to enter the barracks, as the soldier's bulk-headed compartments were called, where I got a sight of the convicts and their tween-decks. The soldiers slept under the booby-hatch and cabins rudely knocked up for their accommodation. Their quarters were divided from the prison by an immensely strong barricade bristling with triangular-headed nails and loop-hold for muskets, so that, in the event of a disturbance, the soldiers could fire upon the convicts within without passing the barricade. There was a strong door on the starboard side of this barricade, at which a sentinel with a loaded weapon was posted day and night. I forget the occasion of my going below. It was blowing strong, and a high sea was running. The ship was laboring heavily, and the straining and groaning of the bulk-heads and temporary fastenings were so distracting that I could easily believe the convicts supposed to the ship was going to pieces. I put my eye to the loop-hold and the barricade and saw the picture. Sleeping shelves for a reception of six men in a row ran the length of the tween-decks on either hand in two tears. There was a suffusion of pale light round about the main hatch, but it was like a sulky, thunderous twilight elsewhere, in the midst of which the shapes of the prisoners moved or lay motionless as though they were phantoms beheld in a dream, tragically colored by storm, by the cannon-like roar of hurling seas, and the wild springs and dives of a ship in angry waters. That scene of tween-decks is the most memorable of my life's visions, but I have no words to communicate it. It was not so much the details of the picture itself, the pale light under the hatch, the spirit-like figures of the felons, the lines of glimmering bunks, the bulging bulk-heads of the hospital in the gloomy corner right forward. It was the deep, human meaning I found in it, the fancy of the sins, and the conscience, and the memories, the burning hopes, the biting griefs, which made up the human life contained in that shadowy timber-sea-tossed jail. This it was that gave to the scene its marvelous, impressive significance. Many of the prisoners were under life sentences, some were being exiled for fourteen and some for terms of seven years. Never a man of them all would probably see England again. Indeed, it used to be said that not one in every hundred transported convicts returned to his native country. When we got out of the channel we met with quiet weather. The prisoners, heavily ironed, were brought up to help to do the ship's work and take exercise. They were but to assist the seamen in washing the decks down. They were also set to various jobs calculated to prove useful to themselves. It was a strange sight to a sailor's eye to see the convicts in their barricaded enclosures scrubbing with brushes at the planks, their chains clanking as they toiled. The burly boson of the ship bawling at the top of his pipes as he swished the water along, warders, themselves picked convicts, roaring commands to their fellow prisoners. You saw the red coat of a sentry, the gleam of his bayonet on the forecastle. Such another sentry clasped his musket at the main hatch, and a third stood at the gate of the quarter-deck barricade. Overhead swelled the white sails, lifting to the milky softness of top-gallant sail and royal. The blue sea flashed in silver glory under the newly risen sun. Smoke blew briskly away from the chimneys of the convicts and the ship's cabooses. You saw the cook cleaning out of his galley door watching the scrubbing convicts. Aft, on the sand-white stretch of poop, the captain and the surgeon in charge of the prisoners would be walking, whilst the mate of the watch, with one arm circling a backstay, might be standing at the poop rail, talking to Captain Gordon or the subaltern, answering questions about the ship, the names of sails, her rate of progress, or with long outstretched arm pointing into the dark blue far recess to some growing star of canvas, or to some blackening, fiber-like line of steamer smoke. It was not until we had closed the Madeira parallels, where the weather was hot and the azure slope of billow winked with the leaps of flying fish that the doctor gave orders for the convict's irons to be removed. The whole of the prisoners were massed on deck and harangued by him before they were freed. Mr. Sanders had a stern face. He was a dark-skinned, smooth-shaven man, with heavy eyebrows and a lowering look, and I thought him a bully, until I had sat a few times at the table when he was present, and exchanged a few sentences with him on deck. And then I guessed he was blind by his expression of feature, and was a good man at root, kind, even warm-hearted, though sternly massed for professional and penitentiary purposes. He addressed the mass of upturned faces on the quarter deck, sermonized them indeed, assured them that it grieved him as much to hear the clank of their chains as the wearing of the irons oppressed integrated them. He begged them to live on good terms with one another, to guard against evil language, to love God and keep his word, and so to resolve as to assure themselves in the time coming, in a new land, in the day of their enlargement, of an honorable and prosperous future. Some listened doggedly, some as though they would like to laugh out, some with a little play of emotion in their faces. They then went below, and their irons were taken off. Until we reached the latitude of, call it, five degrees north, all went as things should with us. The convicts were orderly and seemed well under the control of the doctor. Every day schools were held above or between decks. Addresses on all sorts of topics were delivered to the prisoners by the doctor. Divine service was celebrated three times on Sundays. You'd sometimes hear the fellows down the hatchways singing Psalms of their own accord. The doctor, once at table with a well-pleased countenance, told the captain that one of the worst of the many Ruffians who were being lagged was now become the most penitent of all the prisoners. He talked to me about his past, Dr. Sanders said, with the tears in his eyes and in a voice broken by grief. I have great hopes of the poor fellow. Time wasn't not long ago when I looked down upon him as a Norfolk Islander. I should never be surprised to hear that he was favored when out in the colony and was doing exceedingly well. Is it the square, powerfully-built man pitted with smallpox with little black eyes and a cold black crop of hair? asked Captain Gordon. The doctor inclined his head. His name Simon Rolt, said Lieutenant Venables. I was in town at the time of his trial and, having plenty of leisure, went one day down to the old Bailey. He was convicted. Dr. Sanders lifted his hand with an expressive look. Indeed, it was never his wish that the prisoners should be named, and he was deaf to all inquiries concerning the crimes for which they were being transported. Well, we had been driven by prosperous winds to a parallel of five degrees north. Here the breeze failed. It was the zone of equatorial calms, where the dim, hot blue water fades out into a near-silver faintness of sky, and where the lofty white canvas of the stagnated ship melts into the azure brine under her, like quicksilver cloudily draining through the keel. For the past week the heat had been fierce, but always had there been a breeze to fill the wind sails and render the roasting atmosphere of the tween decks indurable. But now, when the wind was gone, the temperature was scarcely to be supported, even by the most season of our lob-scousers. The pitch lay like butter in the seams of the planks, the wheel, flaming its brass-clad circle to the small high sun, turned red-hot in the grip of the helmsman. The tar came off the rigging and strings upon the fingers like treacle, and the hush of the heat lay upon the plain of ocean as the silence of the white desert dwells upon its leagues of dazzling sand. I had charge of the ship during the second dog-watch, that is from six to eight. Some little time after sundown, and when the sky over our mastheads was full of large, dim, trembling stars, whilst the sea floated from alongside an abreast of ink into the obscurity of the horizon, Dr. Sanders approached Captain Gordon, who was talking to the commander of the ship close to where I stood, and exclaimed, The heat is too much for the people below, a hundred and twenty souls in those low-pitched contracted tween decks. The sufferings are slaves, and the middle passage can't be worse. What's to be done, sir? said Captain Wickham. The wind don't come to the mariners' whistle in these times. We must have detachments of them on deck, said Dr. Sanders. We must let a third of them, at a time, breathe the open air, and relieve the demands upon the atmosphere below. It may be done, he added, with perhaps the least hint of doubtfulness in his manner. Captain Wickham did not speak. It ought to be done, said Lieutenant Venables, crossing the deck out of the shadow-de-port with a lighted cigar in his mouth. It's hell, Gordon, in the barracks. You'll want thee, God, to fall in, Doctor, said Captain Gordon. Oh, yes, if you please. The necessary orders were given. Five or six soldiers mounted the poop ladder, and ranged themselves along the break. The muskets loaded and the bayonets fixed, as usual. The doctor left the deck, and in some ten minutes' time a file of shadowy figures wound, serpent-like, past the main hatch sentry into the barricaded enclosure. They broke into little companies, and all were still as the dead, but I could feel, in their postures, in their manner of grouping themselves, the exquisite relief and delight they found in drinking in the moist night air. This detachment remained an hour on deck. When they went below, and the next slot came up, the time was half-past eight. I had been relieved at eight bells by the chief officer. But the heat in the cabin was so great, that after I had stayed a few minutes in my berth I filled the pipe, and went on to the quarter-deck, where I started smoking in the recess under the poop. The quarter-deck barricade was about six feet tall, and the figures of the convicts behind it were not to be seen where I stood. Nothing was visible but the stars over either bulwark rail, and the festooned cloths of the main course on high, and the dim square of the becombed's top sail above it, floating up and fading in the darkness of the night. All on a sudden an odd, low whistle sounded forward or aft. I can't tell where. An instant later the figure of a convict sprang on to the top of the starboard bulwarks, where, poisoning himself whilst you might have counted ten, he shrieked aloud, Oh, God, have mercy upon me! Oh, Christ, have mercy upon me! And went overboard. Silence lasting a moment or two followed the splash. The hush of amazement and horror was broken by loud cries from the convicts. Sharp orders delivered over my head in the voice of Captain Gordon, followed by the tramp of the soldiers striding quick to the break of the poop, clearly to command the people within the barricades with their muskets. I heard Mr. Barlow, the mate, roar to the man at the wheel. Did you see anything of him there? And Captain Wickham shouted once or twice, Man overboard! Aft, some ends, and clear away the starboard quarterboat. Meanwhile I had observed the form of Dr. Sanders rushed down the poop ladder, and run headlong past a sentry into the barricaded enclosure, where now at this time his stern, clear voice rang out strong as he ordered the convicts to fall in and return to their quarters. I sprang to the side to look for the man that was gone but saw nothing. The sea was like black slush. There was scarce an undulation in it to flap the softest echo out of the lightest canvas. I saw no fire in the water. Something was wrong with the quarterboat. They were a long time bungling with the falls, and I heard the voice of an enraged seaman harshly yell, Oh, the blue man blazes has been and stepped him in this fashion! Jump for the portboat, men! Jump for the portboat! shouted Mr. Barlow. The man will have sounded the bottom while you're messing about with those tackles. I ran on to the poop to lend a hand. The Captain, quickly making me out, told me to get into the boat and take charge. We were lowered, and rode away round the vessel under her counter to look for the man to starboard, from which side he had jumped. The oars, as they dipped, made no fire in the water. We headed for the spot once the convict had sprung, and then worked our way along the bends and afterwards when diffuse strokes a stern, and then rode round to port, conceiving that the poor devil might have risen on the other side of the ship. Do you see anything of him? shouted Captain Wickham. Nothing, sir. Hook on! He's gone! There's no more to be done! called down the Captain. We had spent half an hour in the hunt, and the man was undoubtedly drowned. Who was the convict that had destroyed himself? After I had regained the ship, and Wilst I was ordering one of the boat's crew to go aft and coil away the end of the starboard main brace, which I had noticed hanging over the side. The doctor arrived on the poop, walking slowly. The guard was by this time dismissed. All was silent and motionless on the main deck betwixt the barricades. The only figures down there were the main deck and quarter-deck sentries. But there was much stir, forward upon the forecastle. Where the sailors were stepping from side to side, peering over the rail with some fancy, no doubt of catching sight of the floating body of the drowned convict. The doctor, Captain Wickham, Captain Gordon, and the subaltern came together in a group with an easy earshot of where I stood. It's the man Simon Rolt, said the doctor. I shall be blamed for allowing the convicts to come on deck after the regulation hours. Rolt! Do you mean your religious enthusiast doctor? said Captain Gordon. Lucky you was the only one, exclaimed the commander of the ship. Suicide should be contagious in this heat amongst fellows primed with such memories as sweet in the sleep of your people. I would rather have lost five hundred pounds than that it should have happened, said Dr. Sanders. Did the prisoners take it quietly? inquired Captain Gordon. As I could wish, answered the doctor. They seemed awed and frightened. The conversation ran thus for a while. The party then went below to drink some grog, and after finishing my pipe on the quarter deck, I turned in. I was aroused at midnight to take charge of the ship. I walked the deck until four, and nothing whatever happened saving that at about five bells there suddenly blew a fresh little breeze out of the northwest gloom. It brightened the stars, and the night felt the cooler, for the mere sound of foam alongside. This breeze was blowing when I left the deck, and we were then moving through the water at five knots. At six o'clock I was awakened by the chief officer putting his hand upon my shoulder. The look in his face startled me, and instantly gave me my wits. Mr. Barker, said he, The captain lies dead in his bunk. He's been strangled, garreted, somehow. Come along with me. Who in the devil's name done it? I sprang out of my bunk and clothed myself quickly. The morning had fully broken. It was another brilliant day, and the wind gone, and my cabin porthole glowed in a disc of splendor against the sea under the sun. I followed the mate to the captain's cabin. The poor man lay with his face dark with strangulation. His features were convulsed and distorted, his eyes were staring from their sockets, and froth and blood were on his lips. Dr. Sanders stood beside the body. It seems that the mate had roused him before coming to me. Is he dead, sir? inquired Mr. Barlow. Aye, he's been throttled in his sleep. This must be the work of one of your crew, said Dr. Sanders, speaking low and deliberately, and sending a professional glance under a frown full of thought and wonder at the corpse. Why, one of the crew, cried Mr. Barlow, in a shipload of convicts, with ten soldiers, and a sergeant besides. Convicts! exclaimed the doctor. You'll not wish me to believe, sir, that the god is in collusion with the prisoners, and you'll have to prove that to persuade me this is the work of a convict. Mr. Barlow retorted. Willsay argued the dreadful matter I looked about me, but witnessed nothing to speak to a struggle. Through the large open stern window the silver blue sea was sheeding to the horizon, and the cabin was full of the light glowing upon the water. I was very well acquainted with the furniture of the captain's cabin, which was right aft on the starboard's side. Everything was in its place. The doctor exposed the throat of the body and showed us certain livid marks which he said signified that the captain had been killed through compression of the windpipe by a pair of giant strong hands, powerful indeed to the murderer must have been to destroy so vigorous a frame as captain wickums in silence, suffocating him as he lay, with never a sound to penetrate to the adjacent cabins where Gordon slept, and Dr. Sanders, and Lieutenant Venables. I roused those officers. They viewed the body and then a lot of us went into the cutty where we held a council. Dr. Sanders again asserted that the murder must have been done by one of the sailors, at all events by someone belonging to the ship. The mate would not hear of this. Yes, if there was nobody but the ship's company in the vessel then indeed the murderer would have to be sought for in the forecastle. Captain Gordon said that he knew his men. He'd stake his life upon their dutifulness and loyalty. If the murderer is one of my people, said Dr. Sanders, he passed the sentry to enter the cutty. How was that managed unless the sentry permitted him to pass? The sentry might have been dozing, said I. No, sir, cried Lieutenant Venables, bringing his fist and a passion on the table. You are a sailor, Mr. Barker. You don't know soldiers. Could the convict have returned to his quarters unobserved, even supposing him to have slipped past a nodding sentry? A preposterous conjecture exclaimed the doctor. How would he know where the captain slept? The murderer's no convict, Gordon. It was settled that the maid and I should overhaul the ship's company for evidence, whilst the doctor and the military officers made inquiries for themselves amongst the prisoners and soldiers. I followed the maid on deck. He called to the Boson to pipe all hands. The whole of the crew assembled on the quarter-deck, and Mr. Barlow told them that Captain Wickham had been murdered. He ended that the ship must be searched from end to end, and he called upon the crew to do their utmost to help me and the Boson to ransack the forecastle for evidence. I have no fear of the result, my lads, he exclaimed, if the doctor and military officers can clear the guard and prisoners so much the better. It is my duty as your acting commander to see you cleared also, anyhow, and smartly too, if you'll help. The men sung out to me to come forward at once. Many were their exclamations charged with the heavy oaths of the forecastle, and as they rolled forwards I heard them swearing that if the convicts hadn't done it, then the murderer was one of the guffees, or soldiers. Well, the Boson and I thoroughly searched the forecastle, but it was a fool's quest after all. We hardly knew what to look for. The sailors heartily helped us, threw open their chests, pulled their hammocks to pieces, forced us to overhaul their persons. But what for? It was not as though literally blood had been shed. There was no knife with damning signs upon the handle and blade to seek for. The only weapon used had been the hands. Our search then, forward, was wholly profitless. I was an hour in the forecastle, and when I went after the doctor and officers were still hard at work questioning and hunting after evidence below, they came to Mr. Barlow presently, and told him that they were fully satisfied the murder had not been the work of a convict. As to any of the soldiers being concerned, Captain Gordon indignantly refused to discuss the subject, nay, to listen to a syllable from us mates on that head. Is there nobody missing forward amongst the crew? The doctor asked. Nobody, answered Mr. Barlow. And out is its end with your people. Every bandjack can be accounted for, of course. Search the ship, exclaimed Captain Gordon. For what, rejoined the mate? There's no man missing. With seven weeks out, what do you expect a gentleman to find hidden below at this time of day? I'm for searching the ship, nevertheless, said Captain Gordon. Good God, when such a murder as this has been done would just stop short just when discovery may be within reach of another stride. The mate, with some color in his cheek, answered, the ship shall be searched. I headed one little gang and the bosson another, and we thoroughly overhauled the hold from the fore to the after-peak. The ship's lading consisted of agricultural implements and light government commodities for the colony. Her after-hold was filled with provisions, barrels of flour, casks of rum, great cases of tinned meat, and other such things. A large portion of the steerage, too, under the cutty, was filled with government stuff, mattresses, blankets, and so forth, not to mention three hundred sets of irons. Our search occupied some time. There was much ground to cover. Perhaps we did not seek very strenuously. For my part I never for a moment imagined that there would or could be anyone not belonging to the ship and hiding below. Suppose a stowaway. It would scarcely serve his purpose to make his first appearance on deck as a murderer, and the murderer of the captain of the ship of all men. And yet, though I felt quite certain that the criminal was not amongst our crew, I was equally sure he was not amongst the prisoners. One had but to reason a little to understand that it was not the work of a convict. Every night the tween-deck's prison gate that gave upon the barracks was strongly secured. No convict could have made his way through it, and beside it was posted the sentry. Equally well secured and guarded was the main hatch entrance. The murderer, then, was not a convict. Was he a soldier? We buried the body of the captain that morning, and Mr. Barlow took command of the ship. When night came a sentry was posted at the cutty door. This was in addition to the usual guard, and the sergeant received instructions to make the rounds of the cutty from time to time to see that all was well. In his work he would be assisted by the mate of the watch and by the ship's boson, who would now serve as second mate. The night passed quietly. From time to time Captain Gordon or Lieutenant Venables illustrated his restlessness by coming on deck and flitting about, calling to the cutty door sentry and asking me questions. This was during my watch, during the silent passages of which I deeply pondered the matter of the murder, but could make nothing of it. Had it been done by someone walking in his sleep, some one of us who, utterly unconscious of his deed, had viewed the corpse of the strangled captain with horror and astonishment. I turned in at four, leaving the ship in the hands of the boson, and when I came on deck at eight I found a fresh breeze blowing off the beam, a wide scene of dark blue sea running in lines of froth and the bluff boughs of the Palestine bursting in thunder through the surge and driving the foam before her beyond the flying jaboom end. The brightness of the day, the beauty of the scene, the swift dance of the old hooker, put some heart into all of us who lived aft. Yet we could talk of nothing but the murder. I suggested some nambulism. The doctor listened to me with a dark smile, then walked away. Mr. Barlow said that sooner or later we should find out that one of the soldiers had done it. In the course of the day Captain Gordon and Dr. Sanders went below, where they stayed long, questioning closely. I was on deck at dinnertime and heard Mr. Barlow warmly defending himself against the accusation of the two military men, who, as I gathered, had declared that he exhibited an indifference and seemed to fail in his duty by neglecting to push his investigations to further lengths in the forecastle. This talk made me feel very hot, but Mr. Barlow was well able to take care of himself and wound up a highly flavored protest against Captain Gordon's observations by asserting that his own suspicions strongly pointed to the soldiers. Well the precautions of the previous night were renewed on this. The cutty door was guarded, and from time to time one or another made the rounds of the cabins. I had the morning watch, that is, from four until eight. The hour was about half past six. The watch was busy in Washington the forecastle and four deck, and a number of convicts were scrubbing at the planks in the prison enclosure. I stood at the brass rail, watching a picture that was full of life and color. A light breeze followed us. The sea was a delicate blue, and rolled in flowing folds, and the sails sank like breathing beasts to the curtsying of the ship upon the swell. It was fiery hot, and the sunshine came tingling off its own reflections in the sea, like clouds of flaming needles. I turned and found the ship steward at my elbow. His face was as white as veal. I never could have imagined the countenance capable of such an expression of horror as his carried. His mouth was dry, and he mumbled without articulation, and put out his hand as though feeling for something in the air. Oh, sir! What is it? Dr. Sanders. What of him? What of him? Murdered, sir. His throat cut. God have mercy. It's a sight that's going to last me forever. For some moments I stood motionless, idly and mechanically exclaiming, Dr. Sanders murdered. Dr. Sanders murdered. Then calling to one of the best seamen in my watch, I bade him look after the ship, whilst I ran below, and the steward followed me down the companion ladder. I went straight to the doctor's berth. It was next Captain Gordon's on the starboard side. The steward, in his fright and flight, had left the door open. I had no need to enter the berth to witness the dreadful spectacle. Murder! Suddenly screamed the steward at my elbow, in some hysteric paroxysm of horror. Who's doing it? His loud cries awakened the sleeper's round about. In a moment Captain Gordon, Lieutenant Venables, and Mr. Barlow rushed out of their cabins. The group of us entered the cabin of the slaughtered man and looked at the corpse, and then stood, staring at one another. The head was half severed. Under the bunk the cabin floor was black with blood. But, as in the case of the murder of the Captain, so now, everything was in its place. We went into the cutty, closing the door upon the murdered man. It was scarcely to be realized that he had fallen a victim. One somehow felt the terror in it more strongly than in the assassination of the commander of the ship, although to be sure, as Captain, his had been out and away the more valuable life. Venables! cried Captain Gordon. Tell the sergeant to fall in the guard at once. Mr. Barlow, do not think I wish to dictate. Will you not be acting wisely and summoning the whole of the ship's company aft, equating them with this second crime, and making them understand that Will Stavillian, who has done these things remains undiscovered, no man's life is safe aboard this vessel. Mr. Barlow simply bowed, but in a manner that let Captain Gordon know his wishes would be complied with. I followed him on deck. He was deathly white and dreadfully agitated in horror stricken. I spoke to him. He stared wildly at me and merely cried, Who is it that's doing it? Who is it that's doing it? But already the news of this second murder had gone forward. No need for the boson to sound his whistle. All hands were on deck, and they came tumbling aft with scared looks to the first cry I raised. The guard had assembled on the poop, but when the mate and I came on deck, the last of the convicts who had been helping to wash down was passing through the boarded gangway into the hatch, with the subaltern waiting to see him disappear. The three sentries, forward and amid ships, stood motionless, the bright lines of their bayonets close against their cheeks. By this time the mate had collected his mind. He addressed the crew with passion and in strong language, told them what had happened, swore that no man's life was safe, and exhorted them as Englishmen to work like fiends to discover the assassin if he was one of them. Whoever the murderer is, he don't sling his hammock in our foxtel, shouted a sailor. Another bald, we'll do everything that's right, sir, but don't let the guffees reckon that there's any bloody cutthroats amongst us. Look out for your man in the tween-decks! shouted a third. A whole volley of this sort of thing was fired off by the crew. Captain Gordon spoke to them quietly, and then turned to his own men. His manner was gentlemanly and dignified. The full spirit of the British officer was expressed in him as he stood speaking, with one hand grasping the brass rail. This time the murder was one of real bloodshed. There should be a clue, therefore, to hunt after. Were it but a fragment of stained apparel, or an unowned knife, with marks of human butchery upon it? The sailors roared to me to follow them forward and watch them overhaul their forecastle, but nothing came of it. As before, every chest, every bunk, every hammock, was ransacked. And now the seamen handled one another's clothes. But it was all to no purpose, and I came out of the forecastle hot as fire and sick at heart, and went aft with my report to Mr. Barlow. They had not been idle at the cutty end of the ship. It was owing to the suggestion of Lieutenant Venables that two convicts, who had been thief-takers in their day, hounds of justice afterwards cast, the one for house-breaking, the other for smashing. It was owing to the subaltern that these two men were brought out of the prisoner's quarters and put to the task, guarded by a couple of soldiers, of discovering the murderer. One was a thick-set, beetle-browed man, the other slim, with a cast eye and a fixed, leering smile. They spent the whole day in this hunt. They searched every cabin aft, questioned the soldiers who had been on sentry duty at the cutty door during the night, explored every box, locker, whatever was to be met with in that way. They tumbled my clothes about in my cabin and obliged me to undress myself. But then they served at Gordon, Venables, and Barlow so. They swore the murders were not the work of a convict. Indeed, it was perfectly certain no prisoner could, by any possibility, break out of the tween decks during the night when the gates were secured and the sentries posted. The two convict-searchers then went to the forecastle, but the jacks there, on learning the object of the fellow's visit, said that no Bloomin' Oaken pickers would be allowed to pass through the forescuttle. They had overhauled one another and all that their sea parlor contained, and the second officer who had looked on had gone away satisfied. And a powerful sailor, acting as the crew's spokesman, swore with a huge oath that if the two prisoners attempted to enter the forecastle, the men would lash them back to back and heave them overboard. Captain Gordon asked that the hold should be again thoroughly searched. I put in at this, and said the bosson and I and others had overhauled the ship's inside from fore to after-peak. No good in walking round and round a job, exclaimed Mr. Barlow. What's been done is done, gentlemen. There's no murderer under hatches. How's he to come up unseen? The cutty door sentry guards the steerage hatch. The main hatch and full castle are watched by your men. There was nothing more to be done. The body of the doctor was dropped over the side, and it was now for Captain Gordon and the subaltern to see after the prisoners. A feeling of consternation took possession of us all. Every man looked at his fellows with more or less of distrust. Who was to be the next victim? And who was the fiend that was doing these murders? Where did he lurk? Which of all the people you saw moving about the ship as soldiers, sailors, prisoners, was he? And what was his object? The arm's chest was brought into the cutty, and the four of us who now occupied the after-part of the vessel slept with loaded weapons at our side, and every half hour during the night, at the sound of the bell, the cry, All's well! went from sentinel to sentinel, and regularly at every hour an armed soldier and one of the seamen under the eye of the mate of the watch, whether the bosson or myself, went the rounds of the cutty, pausing, listening, looking into the cabins to see that all was right. This was precaution enough, you might think, with the addition of a cutty door sentry urged into exquisite vigilance by stern instructions and by fear for his own throat. Well, after the doctor was found and murdered, ten days passed, and nothing in any way to alarm us happened. In this time we sneaked across the equator, and our taut bow-line snatched some life for the ship out of a dead-on-end southerly breeze, with a short, staggering roll of foaming blue water and a heavy westerly swell. It fell out by the revolution of the watches that I took charge of the deck on this tenth day from eight o'clock till midnight. The military officers turned in at eleven. Mr. Barlow stayed to yarn with me, and our talk was mainly about the two murders, and I noticed that the mate still seemed to believe that it was the work of a soldier. He went below whilst someone was striking five bells half past eleven. I watched him pass under the skylight. He stood a moment or two looking up at the lamp as though he thought the dim flame should be further dimmed, then drank a glass of water and passed out of sight. The boson relieved me at eight bells. I gave him the course and certain instructions, and specially exhorted him to see that the round of the cutty was punctually made. I went to my cabin by way of the quarter-deck. A sentry stood posted, as usual, at the cutty door, and I could dimly discern the figure of a second soldier at the main hatch. My cabin was immediately abreast of the one that had been occupied by Dr. Sanders. Before lying down, I looked to the brace of pistols we all of us aft now slept with, and then, as here to four, peeped under the bunk and took a careful squint round about. I was startled into instant broad wakefulness by a heavy groan. The report of a musket and a sharp, savage cry as of a man cursing will see stabs and slays another. The report of the musket in the resonant interior of the little cutty sounded like the explosion of a magazine. I rushed out in trousers and shirt, grasping one of the pistols. But I was not the first. Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Venables were before me. Mr. Barlow sprang through his cabin door as I ran through mine. The boson was also tumbling down the companion steps, and I heard the noise of the feet of the watch racing aft along the deck, and exclamations of the soldiers coming through the booby hatch. The figure of a man lay upon the cutty floor between the table and the steerage hatchway, and beside him stood a sentry in the act of wrenching his bayonet out of the prostrate body. I turned up the lamp. The cutty was fast filling. There was a universal growling and crying of questions. See to the prisoners, Venables! I heard Captain Gordon say, and the subaltern shoved through the crown to the door, calling for the guard. Turn him over! Who is it? exclaimed Mr. Barlow. I drew close to the motionless man on deck. Meanwhile the soldier who had killed him was standing at attention with his eyes fixed on Captain Gordon and the bayonet in his musket dripping red in the lamp light. A couple of seamen turned the body. It had fallen sideways to the thrust of the steel, with its face upon deck. Stand out of the light! cried Mr. Barlow. Great Evans exclaimed Captain Gordon. It's the prisoner! Simon Rolt! Simon Rolt. There before us on the deck, dead, with the thrust of a bayonet through his heart, with a long gleaming sheath-knife firmly grasped in his right hand, lay the corpse of the man who had fallen overboard, whom we all supposed lay drowned at the bottom of the sea weeks ago, whom we had all as utterly forgotten as though his memory had been no more than one of the bubbles which had floated to the surface with its plunge. We could not credit the evidence of our sight. Then, indeed, the suspicious of some enormous scheme of treachery as concerned the convicts seemed to visit all in that cabin assembled, as though we had been one man. Elevator Confederate shouted a voice. He was for murder in the officers, and then the convicts that have rose and killed all ends, bawled another with lungs of storm. Silence! cried Captain Gordon, and he questioned the sentry who, standing bolt upright in a cool, collected way, told this story. Having crossed the deck, leaving the cabin door on his left, he happened to glance through the window to the interior, and saw what he supposed was a shadow cast by the dimly burning lamp upon the head of the steerage steps. He shrank and put himself out of sight of it, though commanding it still, and presently he saw it stir and crawl into the shape of a human head and shoulders. The sneaking, subtle bulk rose clear of the steps, and noiselessly as the shadow of a cloud it was creeping aft into the gloom under the table when the sentry swiftly stepped into the door and challenged it. Upspraying the man, in a few beats of the heart his long knife would have been through the soldier, but the red coat was too quick for him. The bayonet pierced the devil's breast, and at the same moment the musket, which the soldier had cocked, exploded. The convict fell dead with a single groan, but the soldier and his rage stabbed him thrice to make sure of him, cursing him loudly as he drove the steel home. Some seamen picked up the body and put it away in one of the cabins. The cut he was then cleared, and a wet swab it brought along to cleanse the deck. But until dawn the sailors stood about in the waste and gangways talking. A quiet wind held the canvas motionless, and the ship stole softly through the shadow of the darkest hours of the night. Mr. Barlow told me that when daybreak came I must go into the hold and find out where the villain had hidden himself. The military men and the maiden I lingered in the cutty in conversation. Was it Roald himself who jumped overboard? Or was the figure some dummy? said Captain Gorton, who immediately added, Oh! It must have been the convict. How could he have got aft? I saw him jump. Many must have seen him, said I. How did he get on board? exclaimed Lieutenant Venables. I'll tell you what's in my head, gentlemen, said I. I've been turning the matter over. You'll find I'm right, I believe. There was the end of the main brace hanging over the quarter. I took notice of it as we pulled under the ship's stern. That brace was taken off its pin and lowered by a Confederate hand. I heard a low whistle sound through the ship before the man sprang. So did I, said Captain Gorton. You'll remember Venables? I asked you if you heard it. We'll find out who was at the wheel that night when the man jumped overboard, exclaimed the mate. Pray go on with your notions, Mr. Barker, said Captain Gorton. I fancy you've hit the truth. Why, I continued. Suppose the thing preconcerted and rolled with a Confederate amongst the crew. The whistle signaled already for the jump. A few silent strokes would bring the convict to the end of the main brace, and the rest signified merely a hand over hand climb, with the mizzen chains as a black hiding place till the ship was silent. I take it that the man got round into the captain's cabin window. He found it open, entered, and strangled the commander, who probably started up on the villain entering. That'll be it, certainly, gentlemen, said Mr. Barlow, looking from one to another of the officers. The convict, he continued, found the curry empty, and made his way into the steerage. But he would need a plan of the ship in his head to hide himself. Who's the scoundrel amongst the crew that helped him? At daybreak the bosson and I went below into the steerage. We found the after-peak hatch cover off, whence it was clear that the man had hidden in that part of the ship. We again thoroughly examined the hold, but we could not imagine how and where the man had secreted his square, powerful form, so as to completely baffle our first search. We found a large cask about a quarter full of ship's bread. The head was off and lying near. The bosson thought that the convict might have concealed himself in that cask, heading himself up in it, and to prove that this could be done he got in, holding the head, which he put on when he was inside. If this cask had been the convict's hiding place it is certain in our first search none of us had meddled with it, or beyond doubt we should have discovered him. And now to end this strange yarn. Mr. Barlow found out that a sea-man named Mogg was at the wheel on the night-roll jumped overboard. The maiden I, indeed all of us aft, were persuaded that whoever stood at the wheel at that time was the convict's confederate, because the main brace must have been dropped into the sea and belayed by someone who, standing near, could fling the rope overboard swiftly over the side without being observed. Certainly the brace had not been long overboard when the whistle sounded. Mr. Barlow, or myself, would have noticed it, wondered at such an unusual piece of loverliness, and ordered the thing to be hauled in and coiled down. However, that Mogg was Rolt's confederate was made almost certain a little later on, when some of the crew came to Mr. Barlow and me to say they had heard Mogg speak of Rolt as his cousin. He was put into irons, but was dumb for a month. Then, swearing that the memory of the murders lay as heavy on his soul as though he had committed them, he confessed that he had agreed with Rolt to help him to escape and hide in the after-part of the ship, of which he gave him a plan. They had twenty different schemes. One had been this of the convicts jumping overboard when Mogg was at the wheel and the main brace over the side. The opportunity they awaited came with several marvelous conditions for successful execution of the stratagem when the doctor, on a breathless night, brought the prisoners up in batches to breathe. Mogg said he had passed Rolt on his way to the wheel, and settled everything in a few whispers, and the signal was to be a long, low whistle. It was then he had given him the knife out of his sheath. The intention of the convict, as we gathered from Mogg, was to kill all the officers but myself. I was to be left to navigate the ship. He and Mogg reckoned that when the crew and the soldiers found themselves without commanders, they would become demoralized, and allow the convicts to seize the ship. The seamen denied that he had tampered with the falls of the starboard quarterboat. We handed Mogg over to the police on our arrival, and they sent him in a ship sailing immediately to take his trial in England.