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Vexed and nervously anxious, Millicent bit one red lip while Thurston pursued the volume, and she could hardy conceal her chagrin when he returned with it. "It flew open and a page or two got wet in the scuppers. Still, it will soon dry in the sun, and because I did my best, you will excuse me being a few seconds too slow to save it," Geoffrey apologized.
The decks were flooded in an instant, and before I could wriggle into my oil-skins I was soaked to the skin, and the warm water was washing above my ankles with the roll of the schooner. The scuppers were wholly inadequate to the occasion, and we were obliged to open the ports to get rid of the water and prevent it from getting below.
Then, although her port side was still in shadow, a dark stain on the green paint beneath one of her scuppers attracted my attention, and set me wondering what it could possibly be; for there was a sinister suggestiveness about its appearance that I did not want to accept.
Captain Benson was examined, his injury diagnosed as brain-concussion, from the glancing bullet, more or less serious, and dragged out to the scuppers, where he was bound beside his unconscious first officer. Then, leaving them to live or die as their subconsciousness determined, the sixteen mutineers sacrilegiously reëntered the cabin and devoured the dinner.
I was on the lee side of the forecastle, and the mainsail, which was still drawing, concealed from me a certain portion of the after-deck. Not a soul was to be seen. The planks, which had not been swabbed since the mutiny, bore the print of many feet; and an empty bottle, broken by the neck, tumbled to and fro like a live thing in the scuppers. Suddenly the Hispaniola came right into the wind.
In the lee scuppers it was up to a man's waist. We sprang aloft and double reefed the topsails, and furled all the other sails, and made all snug. But this would not do; the brig was laboring and straining against the head sea, and the gale was growing worse and worse. At the same time the sleet and hail were driving with all fury against us.
We'll serve out the good wine fairly all round as long as it lasts, and then take to the bad: but mind you don't get drunk, my sons, for we are much too short of hands to have any stout fellows lying about the scuppers." But what was the story of the intendant's being murdered?
It was very hard work too, but it was satisfactory to see the clear water rushing out through the scuppers, and to believe that none was coming in. They pumped and pumped away till they were weary, and then went back into the cabin to lie down awhile. They had now got more accustomed to the sight of their dead captain, so that even Bill did not object to passing the night in the cabin.
I was out on the deck, and the wind almost blew me into the scuppers. The captain was standing right above me on the poop watching the growing light in the east. The waist was full of foamy water that roared and surged and washed everything movable about.
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