The Castaways of the Flag (6 page)

           
But about
this time the crew began to manifest symptoms of insubordination. It even
looked as though the second and third officers, in defiance of every sense of
duty, connived at this relaxing of discipline. Robert Borupt, influenced by his
own jealous and perverse nature, took no steps to check the disorder.

           
But the
Flag
continued to make her way north-east. On the 9th of September she was
almost in the middle of the Indian Ocean, on the line of the Tropic of
Capricorn, her position being 20° 17' latitude and 80° 45' longitude.

           
During the
course of the previous night symptoms of bad weather had appeared—a sudden fall
of the barometer, and a gathering of storm clouds, both signs of the formidable
hurricanes that too often lash these seas to fury.

           
About three
o'clock in the afternoon a squall got up so suddenly that it almost caught the
ship—a serious matter for a vessel which, heeled over to one side, cannot
answer to her rudder and is in danger of not being brought up again unless her
rigging is cut away. If that is done, she is disabled, incapable of offering
any resistance to the waves while lying to, and is at the mercy of the ocean's
fury.

           
As soon as
this storm broke the passengers had, of course, been obliged to keep their
cabins, for the deck was swept by tremendous seas. Only Fritz and Frank stayed
on deck to lend a hand with the crew.

           
Captain Gould
took the watch at the outset, and the boatswain was at the wheel, while the
second and third officers were on duty in the forecastle. The crew were at
their posts, ready to obey the captain's orders, for it was a matter of life
and death. The slightest mistake in the handling of her, while the seas were
breaking over the
Flag
as she lay half over on the port side, might have
meant the end. Every effort must be made to get her up again, and then to trim
her sails so as to bring her head on to the squall.

           
And yet the
mistake was made, not deliberately perhaps, for the ship ran the risk of
foundering through it, but certainly through some misunderstanding of the
captain's orders, of which an officer ought not to have been capable, if he
possessed any of the instincts of a sailor.

           
Robert
Borupt, the second officer, alone was to blame. The foretopsail, trimmed at a
wrong moment, drove the ship still farther over, and a tremendous lump of water
crashed over the taffrail.

           
"That
cursed Borupt wants to sink us!" cried Captain Gould.

           
"He has
done it!" the boatswain answered, trying to shove the tiller to starboard.

           
The captain
leaped to the deck and made his way forward at the risk of being swept back by
the water. After a desperate struggle he reached the forecastle.

           
"Get to
your cabin!" he shouted in a voice of wrath to the second officer;
"get to your cabin, and stop there!"

           
Borupt's
blunder was so patent that not one of the crew dared to protest, although they
were all ready to stand by him if he had given them the word. He obeyed,
however, and went back to the poop.

           
What was
possible to do, Captain Gould did. He trimmed all the canvas that the
Flag
could
carry, and succeeded in bringing her up without being obliged to cut away the
rigging. The ship no longer lay broadside on to the sea.

           
For three
consecutive days they had run before the storm in constant peril. During almost
the whole of that time Susan and Jenny and Dolly were obliged to keep to their
cabins, while Fritz, Frank, and James Wolston helped in the various operations.

           
At last, on
the 13th of September, an abatement of the storm came. The wind dropped, and
although the sea did not immediately drop too, at last the waves no longer
swept the deck of the
Flag.

           
The ladies
hurried eagerly out of their cabins. They knew what had taken place between the
captain and the second officer, and why the latter had been removed from his
post. Robert Borupt's fate would be decided by a naval court when they got
back.

           
There was
much damage to the canvas to be made good, and John Block, who was in charge of
this work, saw quite clearly that the crew were on the verge of mutiny.

           
This state of
things could not be lost upon Fritz, or Frank, or James Wolston, and it filled
them with more uneasiness than the storm had caused them. Captain Gould would
not shrink from the severest measures against the mutineers. But was he not too
late?

           
During the
following week there was no actual breach of discipline. As the
Flag
had
been carried some hundreds of miles to the east, she had to turn back to the
west, in order to get into the longitude of New Switzerland.

           
On the 20th
of September, about ten o'clock, much to the surprise of all, for he had not
been released from arrest, Robert Borupt reappeared on the deck.

           
The
passengers, who were all sitting together on the poop, had a presentiment that
the situation, grave enough already, was about to become still more grave.

           
Directly
Captain Gould saw the second officer coming forward he went up to him.

           
"Mr.
Borupt," he said, "you are under arrest. What are you doing here!
Answer!"

           
'' I will!''
cried Borupt loudly. ' 'And this is my answer!"

           
Turning to
the crew, he shouted:

           
"Come
on, mates!"

           
"Hurrah
for Borupt!" sang from every part of the ship!

           
Captain Gould
rushed down into his cabin and came back with a pistol in his hand. But he was
not given time to use it. A shot, fired by one of the sailors round Borupt,
wounded him in the head, and he fell into the boatswain's arms.

           
Resistance
was hopeless against an entire crew of mutineers, headed by the first and
second officers. John Block, Fritz, Frank, and James Wolston, drawn up near
Captain Gould tried in vain to maintain the struggle. In a moment they were
overwhelmed by numbers, and ten sailors hustled them down to the spar-deck with
the captain.

           
Jenny, Dolly,
Susan, and the child were shut into their cabins, over which a guard was placed
by order of Borupt, now ruler of the ship.

           
The situation
of the prisoners in the semi-darkness of the spar-deck, and of the wounded
captain whose head could only be dressed with cold compresses, was a hard one.
The boatswain was unfailing in his devotion to the captain.

           
Fritz and
Frank and James Wolston were consumed by appalling anxiety. The three women
were at the mercy of the mutineers of the
Flag!
The men suffered agony
from the thought that they were powerless.

           
Several days
passed. Twice a day, morning and evening, the hatch of the spar-deck was opened
and the prisoners were given some food. To the questions that John Block asked
them, the sailors only replied with brutal threats.

           
More than
once did the boatswain and his companions try to force up the hatch and regain
their liberty. But the hatch was guarded day and night, and even if they had
succeeded in raising it, overpowering their guards, and getting up on deck,
what chance would they have had against the crew, and what would have been the
result?

           
"The
brute! The brute!" said Fritz over and over again, as he thought of his
wife and Susan and Dolly.

           
"Yes;
the biggest rascal alive!" John Block declared. "If he doesn't swing
some day it will be because justice is dead!"

           
But if the
mutineers were to be punished, and their ringleader given the treatment he
deserved, a man-of-war must catch and seize the
Flag.
And Robert Borupt
did not commit the blunder of going into waters where ships were numerous, and
where he and his gang might have run the risk of being chased. He must have
taken the ship far out of her proper course, most probably to the eastward,
with the object of getting away alike from ships and the African and Australian
shores.

           
Every day was
adding a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, miles to the distance separating the
Flag
from the meridian of New Switzerland. Captain Gould and the boatswain could
tell from the angle at which the ship heeled to port that she was making good
speed. The creaking of the mast steps showed that the first officer was
cramming on sail. When the
Flag
arrived in those distant waters of the
Pacific Ocean where piracy was practicable, what would become of the prisoners?
The mutineers would not be able to keep them; would they maroon them on some
desert island? But anything would be better than to remain on board the ship,
in the hands of Robert Borupt and his accomplices.

           
A week had passed
since Harry Gould and his friends had been shut up on the spar-deck, without a
word about the women. But on the 27th of September, it seemed as if the speed
of the three-master had decreased, either because she was becalmed or because
she was hove to.

           
About eight
o'clock in the evening a squad of sailors came down to the captives.

           
These had no
choice but to obey the order to follow him which the second officer gave them.

           
What was
going on above? Was their liberty about to be restored to them? Or had a party
been formed against Robert Borupt to restore Captain Gould to the command of
the
Flag?

           
When they
were brought up on to the deck in front of all the crew, they saw Borupt
waiting for them at the foot of the mainmast. Fritz and Frank cast a vain
glance within the poop, the door of which was open. No lamp or lantern shed a
gleam of light within.

           
But as they
came up to the starboard nettings, the boatswain could see the top of a mast
rocking against the side of the ship.

           
Evidently the
ship's boat had been lowered to the sea.

           
Was Borupt
preparing, then, to put the captain and his friends aboard her and cast them
adrift in these waters, abandoning them to all the perils of the sea, without
the least idea whether they were near any land?

           
And the
unfortunate women, too, were they to remain on board, exposed to such appalling
danger?

           
At the
thought that they would never see them more, Fritz and Frank and James
determined to make a last attempt to set them free, though it should end in
dying where they stood.

           
Fritz rushed
to the side of the poop, calling Jenny. But he was stopped, as Frank was
stopped, and James was stopped before he heard any answer from Susan to his
call. They were overpowered at once, and despite resistance were lowered with
Captain Gould and John Block over the nettings into the ship's boat, which was
fastened alongside the vessel by a knotted cable.

           
Their
surprise and joy—yes, joy!—were inexpressible. The dear ones whom they had
called in vain were in the boat already! The women had been lowered down a few
minutes before the prisoners had left the spar-deck. They were waiting in
mortal terror, not knowing whether their companions were to be cast adrift with
them.