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Her only safe course was to keep directly before it, for if she were to bring the seas abeam, they would to a certainty sweep over her and carry everything before them. Owen remained on deck, holding on to a stanchion, while two of his stoutest hands were at the wheel.
I have said that the cage had a top as well as a front, and this top was left standing when the front was wound through the slot in the wall. It consisted of bars at a few inches' interval, with stout wire netting between, and it rested upon a strong stanchion at each end. It stood now as a great barred canopy over the crouching figure in the corner.
Two other natives who were in the canoe leaped overboard, but soon got in again, and threw away the stanchion. One of them sat baling the blood and water out of the canoe, uttering a kind of hysteric laugh, while the other, a youth of fifteen, looked at the dead body with a serious and dejected countenance. The latter was found to be the son of the man who had been killed.
Then, with a few words of warning to the quartermaster and the seamen, Dick turned and made a dash for the boat deck. Upon reaching the ladder leading to the boat deck, which was the uppermost deck of all, he found it packed with first-class passengers, among whom the word had already been passed round, so, rather than incommode them, he sprang up on the rail and swarmed up a stanchion.
At the break, propped to windward of a stanchion, he looked down on the main deck. It seemed to him that the ship had a tendency to stand up a little more. The wind had eased a little, he thought, but the sea ran as high as ever.
"Yes," nodded Benson, quickly. "This was his work. Get me free from this stanchion, won't you?" Despite his elaborate effort at calmness Hal Hastings shook so that it was some seconds before he could get his knife from a pocket. "Wait till I steady down," Hal muttered, grimly. "I'm afraid of stabbing you."
"The elephant was moored to a stanchion by a short length of chain shackled around his hind leg, but it gave him a radius of action equal to his length and that of his hind leg and trunk. This precluded our using the fore-hatch to reach the hold, so we used the main-hatch; and, as there was daily use of it, this hatch was fitted with steps, and always kept open, even in bad weather.
The more Rebecca resisted, the more determined was Shanty; neither did he quit his hold of the old woman, until the whole party had entered the room, the door being shut, and his back set against it, where he kept his place, like a bar of iron in a stanchion. Chairs had been set for Mrs. Margaret and Tamar, and when they were seated Dymock informed the prisoner that she might speak.
Now and again one caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope; but the weight of the bodies behind tore such grips loose. One man I noticed fetch up, head on and square on, with the starboard-bitt. His head cracked like an egg. I saw what was coming, sprang on top of the cabin, and from there into the mainsail itself.
Afterward he found that the effort to throw him overboard had failed only because his assailants in their haste had hurled him against an unseen stanchion. Peggy was borne forward and lowered swiftly into arms that deposited her roughly upon something hard. There was a jerky, rocking motion, the sudden splash of oars, and then she knew no more.
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