‘I guessed that,’ he exclaimed. ‘When they rushed upon the poop they struck out and stabbed to right and left of them, but none offered to hurt me. Butler stood on the ladder where the sentry had been bayoneted.’
‘No; it was a young convict with a purple face, who kept yelling like a madman. Butler stood on the ladder and shouted to me, and I ran to him. He put his arm round my neck and said: “Will, it’s a bloody business. I could have stopped it by peaching, but they would have killed me; and what was to become of Marian?” A line of convicts was drawn across the quarter-deck, and they saw Butler with his arm round my neck. He told me that he had seen you run into the steerage and that I should find you in your cabin.’
He was now beginning to breathe with more freedom, and something of the dreadful, staring look was passing out of his eyes. He listened and then said: ‘They’ll not hurt us. Butler seems to have authority. Did he plan this frightful business?’
‘No, but he would not hinder it. Why should he? He’s an innocent man, and must have his liberty. Let those who swore his freedom away, who sentenced him, who have ruined our lives and made him what he is, be responsible for this.’
‘It couldn’t have happened,’ he exclaimed, ‘but for our men. Many of them are as vile as the worst of the convicts. I was on the poop and saw it all, and it was as quickly done as letting go a topsail-halliards. The prisoners’ messmen massed themselves as usual past the main-hatch at breakfast-time; I noticed some of our sailors loafing near the convicts’ galley within leap of the main-hatch sentry. I also saw a cluster of seamen standing close in the way of the forecastle sentry’s walk. I heard a loud shout; I’ll swear it was the prize-fighter’s voice. In an instant the forecastle sentry was knocked down by the seamen; the main-hatch sentry was seized from behind and disarmed by the sailors who rushed from the convicts’ galley. The messmen threw down their breakfast utensils as a sort of second signal; I watched and saw it all, Marian; quicker than I can talk the convicts on deck made for the quarter-deck barricade-gate, and fast as water pours through a scupper-hole the prisoners came streaming up out of their quarters. The quarter-deck sentry levelled his piece and fired, and a convict dropped. The convicts forced the gate; the sentry bayoneted the first of them and was then knocked down; his musket was wrested from him, and a brutal ruffian beat his head in with the stock as the poor fellow lay on his back. The poop sentries fired at the convicts as they burst through the barrier, but in a few moments the prisoners got possession of the arms in the recess and swarmed up by either ladder. Oh, it was a splendid, maddening, frightful sight to see those two soldiers, one at each ladder, holding the steps against the yelling mob until one was beaten down and killed as I have told you!’