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Updated: May 5, 2025
Soon the waves dash and the rain pours down. "I see a small bundle on the deck. It obstructs the approaches to the 'scupper' in front of my cabin door. About to step out and clear this watercourse, I see that 'sorrel-top, corpulent, garrulous German doctor gently unwind the soaked package and tenderly gaze at an upturned childish face.
I recognised it for what it was, and what I had all along suspected, but had refused to acknowledge it to be blood, dried blood, that had been shed so freely that it had poured out through the scupper- holes!
The Indian merely nodded in reply, and without even glancing around upon the curious watchers in the room, he at once followed the girl as she passed out of the building through a side door which opened upon the street. There was no wild stampede to the Big Draw mining camp on Scupper Creek, where gold had been discovered.
However, next morning, the young lady being then on deck, veiled as she always now went, and sitting in a retired part of the poop, the second mate, the doctor, and the stewardess again thoroughly searched Miss Le Grand's berth, and they found in a hollow in the ship's side, a sort of scupper in fact for the porthole, a carving knife, rusted with old stains of blood.
Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear. Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred feet splashed into a wave. From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far removed from any of the greater emotions.
Rigging extra pumps occupied all the time until low water, and as the sluggish stream paused at slack, just before turning, every available hand in the ship ground away on brakes and chain pumps until the old brigantine gushed yellow water at every scupper. Barry, hanging over the hatch coaming, peered anxiously into the dark hold, hoping against hope that the pumps were gaining.
He turned his back on the heap of bloody, prostrate men, stepped over a little rivulet of gore that ran rapidly toward the scupper as the ship heeled to port, then hesitated and started back as she heeled to starboard. He was vaguely conscious that Mr. Uhl had shut down his engines before coming on deck and that in consequence the ship had lost headway and was beginning to wallow.
Well, while things stood thus, suddenly the Hispaniola struck, staggered, ground for an instant in the sand, and then, swift as a blow, canted over to the port side, till the deck stood at an angle of forty-five degrees, and about a puncheon of water splashed into the scupper holes, and lay in a pool between the deck and bulwark.
At the moment when there seemed no chance of salvation for the crew of the Plymouth Adventure, Joe Hawkridge leaped from the gun and beckoned Jack. The grin was restored to the homely, freckled visage and the salt water gamin danced in jubilant excitement. Down from the forecastle roof tumbled Jack Cockrell and went sliding across the deck, heels over head, to fetch up in the scupper.
That was a terrible winter, the winter poor "What-Now" Vandervoot froze to death on the streets of Keijo. In Pyeng-yang I became a water-carrier, for know that that old city, whose walls were ancient even in the time of David, was considered by the people to be a canoe, and that, therefore, to sink a well inside the walls would be to scupper the city.
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