THE REVOLT OF THE CONVICTS

THE two men were on their feet with the table between them. For some little time, the Captain had not heard the sentry’s step in the passage, and he felt a certain anxiety. How was it that the sentry had allowed the ruffian to pass? By what piece of strategy had he succeeded in reaching the cabin? By what means did he hope to escape? Chéri-Bibi was nearing the door by imperceptible movements, his revolver leveled at Barrachon. He was on the point of reaching the door when Barrachon suddenly leapt aside. Chéri-Bibi thrust the revolver between his eyes.

“If you stir before I’ve opened the door,” he said, “I’ll shoot you as I would a dog.”

Then the Captain grasped the significance of Chéri-Bibi’s coolness during his story. He had the key of the cabin in his pocket. The Captain did not move a muscle until the door was opened slightly, for imprisoned with the convict and unarmed as he was, he had not the slightest chance of getting the better of him. Chéri-Bibi cast a glance outside. Then it was that Barrachon resolved to act. Suddenly stooping he rushed at him, shouting for help.

Chéri-Bibi in a flash seized him by the throat and held him under him while he gasped for breath.

“I won’t kill you,” he said, “because I’ve no liking for useless crimes. But if you get out of this business alive, I swear that I myself will land you on the coast, as naked as a savage, as a punishment for refusing my last request.”

He hurriedly left the cabin and the door closed behind him.

The Captain picked himself up and flung himself at the door, but Chéri-Bibi had turned the key. Barrachon was a prisoner on board his own ship. He shouted and yelled and stamped his feet so as to attract attention in the ward-room, which, as it happened, was just underneath his cabin. And at that very moment the _Bayard_ was filled with an indescribable tumult, amidst which the sound of firing could be heard from all sides.

A number of men rushed up in answer to the Captain’s calls for help. De Vilène himself opened the door, the key of which was in the lock.

“The convicts are in revolt,” exclaimed the Lieutenant.

“Chéri-Bibi has just left me,” returned the Captain, who was foaming with rage.

They wasted no time in explanations. Over their heads and under their feet the noise of continuous firing could be heard. The fight seemed to be taking place without any definite plan. By the officers’ orders the sailors whose watch it was, and the military overseers who were on guard, were hurriedly warning their comrades, who got out of their beds in dismay. Every man in the ship on foot and armed was the order. As they passed near a companion-way they heard young de Kerrosgouët shouting commands from the deck near the entrance to the cages.

At the companion-way leading to the upper deck, they came up against a crowd of persons shouting and gesticulating and apparently in a state of mad excitement. They were held up by some obstacle the nature of which they could not at first distinguish. At length they perceived that the companion-way had been taken away. Yes, the iron ladder was no longer in its place. It had been removed. And throughout the length of the alley-way the same thing had happened to the other ladders; with the result that all the men hurrying up from the lower decks were struggling there, while near the cages the fusillade continued to the accompaniment of howls and shrieks.

The overseers’ wives hastened up also, crying out as though they were being flayed alive. In the presence of this inconceivable confusion the Captain resumed his usual self-possession and ordered the men to go into the store-room and look for a few boxes with which to make a temporary stairway.

Some sailors and a dozen convict guards by standing on the shoulders of their comrades had already managed to gain the upper deck. But valuable time had been lost. What exactly was happening up there?

The Captain leapt on deck and joined de Kerrosgouët, who, with the assistance of a few sailors, was dragging the 37 mm. Hotchkiss gun to the hatchway which ran down to the cages. Fortunately the naval constructors whose business it was to transform the old cruiser, as they called her, into a transport for Guiana, had permanently closed every other entrance in order to render the supervision of the convicts less difficult. They would find themselves, as it were, bottled up. The hatchway was already surrounded by a cordon of military overseers who kept up a continuous fire, at random, into this dark cavity from which also a mortal fire was issuing.

It was a fine night, with a touch of tropical splendor in it, and the moon threw sufficient light over the scene of carnage to enable the Captain, as he drew near, to perceive a number of bodies lying on the deck. As soon as the first alarm was given, the Sub-Lieutenant gathered together the men under his command and attempted, at all costs, to go down to the cages. His efforts were fruitless. His men were obliged to fall back, and de Kerrosgouët himself received a shot in the forehead from which the blood streamed over his face. He informed the Captain that here, likewise, the ladder was no longer in position. How and from whom had the convicts obtained their arms? The fire which came from them was most deadly. Not one of the thirty convict guards whose duty it was that night to keep watch over the cages had been seen.

The unfortunate men, it was certain, had been massacred, and it was equally certain that it was with their rifles and revolvers that the convicts had so vigorously returned the fire which was being directed against them from the hatchway.

At this juncture de Vilène rushed up to the Captain with an appalling piece of news. The men who were not on guard and were wakened in haste, had made a dash for their arms, but they discovered that the rifles were no longer in the arms-rack. They were bound to conclude, therefore, that these rifles had passed into the possession of the convicts owing to treachery which they did not suspect, and which constituted a fresh danger, the more to be dreaded inasmuch as it was unknown. The Captain turned pale.

The ruffians, who were now well armed, and doubtless possessed no lack of munitions, had a considerable advantage in point of numbers. They were obviously determined to stick at nothing, for they had nothing to lose, and the life that awaited them in the penal settlement had no attraction for them. The game would be lost to the officers and crew if they did not succeed in massacring the convicts to the last man, by turning the cages into a bleeding mass. From this infernal pit, riddled with shot just as the crater of a volcano is riddled with shafts of light, thick wreaths of smoke from the firing ascended, and at the same time the outlaws’ Song of Death floated up:

_Who blows the blooming lot U P?_ _Sing ho for Chéri-Bibi._

Fortunately for Barrachon he had at his disposal two Hotchkiss guns, one of 37 mm. and the other of 47 mm., with which he would be able to shoot down the rabble.

It was a stroke of luck that at the last moment he had requested the authorities to supply him with this additional means of defense. In ordinary circumstances they would have laughed in his face. But they knew that Chéri-Bibi was on board, and they regarded the precaution as a legitimate one. The two small guns were shipped at the eleventh hour, and were hoisted on the _Bayard_ at night. The Captain ordered them to be stowed temporarily in the flag-locker until he was ready to fix them in their regular places. Then he overlooked them, which in itself was another piece of luck, for if the mysterious confederates had known that those powerful weapons were on board, they would have been in the convicts’ hands, in all probability, at that moment.

After his first failure, it occurred to young Kerrosgouët, who knew where the guns were, that in the terrible position which had arisen he should use them. The sailors were already placing the second gun by the side of the first when Barrachon, who had an eye for the future, stopped the men in their work.

One gun was all that was needed at the hatchway if they were to be the victors. In view of certain eventualities which they must provide for, such as a rush of convicts in other parts of the ship, or on the deck itself, it would be well to hold back one of those formidable weapons. Thus he had the 47 mm. Hotchkiss hoisted on to the bridge, on the very roof of the chart-room. From that position he could dominate the ship’s upper works and sweep them from end to end.

Meanwhile at the gaping mouth leading to the cages, firing continued on both sides. De Vilène and de Kerrosgouët had set up their Hotchkiss on an improvised platform whence they could shoot down into this infernal hole. As soon as this hole was cleared they would jump down into it; and there would be a pitiless slaughter. Reassured for the time being, Barrachon went below to the lower decks. He ordered the women and children to be locked in their quarters; and the women wept and cried out in terror for their husbands.

Accompanied by a squad of military overseers he went still further below.

His chief fear was lest he should be attacked from the rear. He had to remember that Chéri-Bibi had escaped from the lower deck through a cavity in the cell, the old ammunition magazine, and some opening which still remained to be discovered. Chéri-Bibi must have returned by the same way, and his assumption was at once confirmed when he came upon two convict guards writhing in their death agony. The way which was afterwards taken by the ruffian was a mystery, impossible to divine. Barrachon came across bulkheads which were uninjured. He had some fifty men under his command, spread around the old ammunition magazine, into which seemingly no one could enter, except by way of the cages, owing to the alterations effected by the naval constructors.

His rear and his passage below having been secured, he made his way to the upper deck.

The Captain was filled with a new hope. The revolt was localized, and the convicts were surrounded and besieged. Though they might not succeed in penetrating into the very center of the rebellion, they would end by stifling it. It would die a natural death for lack of munitions and food. The ruffians would be vanquished by hunger and thirst. Nevertheless there was an increasing tumult. Wherever he went, however far he might venture in the hidden recesses of the ship, convicts could be heard around him singing their terrible song. And those fateful syllables which might have sounded so pleasant, reached his ears like a violent and perpetual menace: “Chéri-Bibi ... Chéri-Bibi.”

What was the secret of this power of crime over crime? ... How all those wretched beings submitted to the scoundrel who maintained that he was the victim of Fate! And how he lured them on to follow him to the death, for they were marching towards death! What slaughter there would be! What bloodshed! Streams of blood were about to flow from deck to deck, from gangway to gangway, from bilge to bilge to the main bilge, which the Captain saw would not be emptied, but would one day pour out through the pumps naught but blood.

Shots behind the bulkheads, cries of fury and of men in their death throes, singing by those dregs of humanity. Yes, the rebellion had broken out at the call of Chéri-Bibi. But how was it that it had taken place? Once more the question arose, how had the convicts obtained arms? How had they escaped from their cages, with a double guard watching them unceasingly? Those were mysteries which the Captain, whose heart was filled with a desperate anger, was unable to fathom.

And this is what had occurred: That night after eating their dinner from the tubs suspended on the chain, Little Buddha asked Carrots to search carefully in his kit bag. To the no small astonishment of the men, he revealed to view half a dozen revolvers fully loaded which “asked only to be allowed to go off.”

“Fine shooters!” exclaimed the convict in a stifled voice, while his comrades around him nudged each other and could scarcely restrain their joy. So it was planned for that night! During the last forty-eight hours they were gasping for the moment to come. And now they could scarcely bring themselves to believe in it. And yet it was high time if they meant to save the Toper from execution in the morning for attempting to strangle a warder.

The revolt, then, was a reality. With the Toper out of the way and Chéri-Bibi out of sight, they had no longer believed in it. Little Buddha alone, who was in the Toper’s confidence, had maintained a slightly mysterious air which puzzled and reassured them.

And now by some inconceivable miracle they were in possession of revolvers, of weapons that would set them free. Without a doubt it would put renewed heart into them. The moment had come to turn in, and there was a great commotion as they unrolled their hammocks and hung them up for the night.

Little Buddha made the most of the uproar to explain to the others who were expecting the watchword what was about to happen.

To begin with, nothing was to be done until Chéri-Bibi gave the signal for a general uprising; and this signal was to be a shrill whistle which would come from the lower deck during the night, but at what hour exactly he was unable to say. They had to bide their time. Little Buddha thought he could vouch for the fact that arms had been introduced into three other cages. In any case they were agreed to strike together. They would go ahead in unison. They had sworn it. Only they must not “have a funk” because blood would be shed.

The other cages would not enter the struggle when they heard the whistle, which was a signal intended only for Little Buddha, but would wait for a revolver shot from Little Buddha. But he would not fire until the cage was opened.

The Kanaka answered that the cages were never opened at night time, whereupon Little Buddha divulged the entire plot in order to inspire confidence. One of his pals would “give him the hold”; in other words, while he pretended to be asleep, this man would unhook his hammock as if he were playing a practical joke on him; and he would fall violently to the deck uttering cries and moans. He would not rise, but pretend that he had broken a limb. Thus the guards would be bound to come to his assistance. As soon as the door opened, before the guards knew what was going on they would kill them. And one hundred and fifty pals would hurl themselves into the alley-way.

In each alley-way and deck were ten guards, and it would not take long to tackle them and do for them. Afterwards to take the keys from them and open the cages and cells would be simplicity itself. They would release the Toper, the African and all their mates. They would constitute an army. And Chéri-Bibi would be with them! He would appear from they knew not where like a good omen, and bring with him rifles and munitions and anything else that might be needed to complete the feast. Everything had been thought out from the beginning of the voyage, and success was a certainty. As for the military overseers who would make for the upper deck, there was nothing to fear from them for the companion-way at the main hatch had been loosened. To take it down would be Little Buddha’s job. Nothing had been overlooked. They would be masters of the ship and do just as they pleased. Only, he repeated, they must understand that those who backed out of it would be killed. Every man’s skin was at stake, and it would be a battle for life or death.

The plot seemed splendid to some, problematical to others, and impossible to others again, who, however, kept their opinions to themselves; but they all agreed that they had to go ahead for all they were worth; even the Lamb was in it.

Convicts have a method of communicating among themselves, of talking, of arranging the minute details of a plan of escape, under the very eyes of the guards, who do not know how it is done. No sooner were the hammocks slung up in the cages and the men lying in their swinging beds, than the whole plot was understood and settled. Each man knew what part he had to play in it.

And yet the “turning in” that night was like the “turning in” on any other night, and the same sound of men snoring, the same hoarse gurgling from brutish throats arose between decks, while the warders on guard, revolver in hand, or rifle on shoulder, paced up and down before the cages.

Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, midnight.... Nothing as yet had occurred. The men, growing a little impatient, turned over in their hammocks, straining their ears for the least sound, counting the bells as they were struck, during the watch, by the signalman on the upper deck. They had endured too many hours of sleeplessness in the past not to know exactly the meaning of the bells as they were struck. At one o’clock, five o’clock and nine o’clock the signalman struck twice; at half-past one, half-past five, and half-past nine he struck twice, followed by one slightly softer note; at two o’clock, six o’clock, and ten o’clock he struck two double bells; at half-past two, half-past six, and half-past ten he struck double bells twice and a half bell, or four sharp notes and a softer one; at three o’clock, seven o’clock, and twelve o’clock he struck three double notes; and at the half-hours a small note extra. Finally, at four o’clock, eight o’clock, and twelve o’clock he struck four double notes with a half note extra to denote the half-hours.

The eight and a half bells of half-past twelve had struck when a shrill whistle rang through the lower decks. It came from the hold, and the guards wondered what the meaning of it was. They put the question from deck to deck, and some of them in order to find out leant over the companion-ways. Then at the back of the alley-way in which the cells were situated, some one shouted that the Toper or the African must have whistled, for both of them were locked in the same cell, the other cells being occupied or not sufficiently secure. Nothing further was heard, and quietness was soon restored among the guards, who resumed once more their accustomed beat.

Suddenly there was a crash in Chéri-Bibi’s old cell. It was Little Buddha, who had been “given the hold” and was rolling on the deck near the bars, cursing and moaning in a most pitiful manner.

The guard who was nearest the cage went up to the bars and ordered the convict to hold his noise unless he wanted to be sent to the cells in the morning.... Little Buddha groaned still louder.

“I’ve broken my leg, I’m certain.... I’ve broken my leg.”

“Well, it will be set to rights to-morrow,” growled the guard. “Stop your row, or I’ll blow your brains out.... Shut your jaw, damn it!”

And as though the threat had frightened him, Little Buddha, crouching in the dusk of the cage, became silent. The men in their hammocks and in the adjoining cages wondered what he was waiting for. Soon they were reassured, for Little Buddha again set up his moaning. He was suffering more than he could bear, and wanted to go to the sick-bay at once. His leg was broken. He would kill the man who had played him such a dirty trick, he declared. Finally nothing could be heard but his clamor. There was a general protest. It was impossible to sleep in such a din. And the convicts advised the warders, in surly tones, to take the “flabby legged” person to the sick-bay. It was the hour for having a snooze, what!

The warders once more ordered him in threatening language to be quiet.

“I can’t bear it ... I can’t bear it. My poor leg.... Let me go to the sick-bay.... Besides, my head’s broken. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m covered with blood. I’m done for, I know I am.”

The guards went up to the bars to which he had dragged himself, and threw the light of a lantern over his face. It was bleeding. To hasten the climax Little Buddha had cut his forehead with a knife.

It was then that Pascaud, who was going his rounds, stopped and decided what was to be done.

“He is bleeding. He says he’s broken a leg. Look sharp, and take him to the sick-bay.”

“Yes ... yes ... take him away,” snarled the other men, who seemed to have exhausted their patience.

The sound of Pascaud fumbling with his keys could be heard. He was looking for the one which opened the cage. A great silence fell; the decisive struggle was at hand. The success of the revolt depended upon the next moment.

Little Buddha, with one hand in his trousers pocket, clutched his revolver.

The men above in their hammocks held themselves in readiness to jump out; but their seeming sleepiness deceived Pascaud, who little suspected what was about to happen to him.

He opened the door, followed by a guard who stood at the entrance and unconsciously helped the plotters by preventing the door from closing with a slam. As a further precaution one of the convicts stretched out his leg, above his hammock, to keep the grille open.

Pascaud bent over Little Buddha.

“Come, what’s the matter with you? Let’s have a look.”

At that moment Little Buddha, rising to his feet, fired his revolver point blank at him. At once pandemonium reigned, more shots were fired, the convicts leapt on to the deck, and made a rush at the guards.

Pascaud sank to the floor, killed, it seemed, on the spot. His fellow-guard on the doorstep had not time to move a limb, for a bullet struck him down almost at the same time, and he fell head foremost into the alley-way.

In the other cages the convicts armed with revolvers fired on the guards through the bars, and a general fusillade blazed out from the three cages.

Terror stricken, unable to understand what was happening to them, nor, in particular, how the convicts had secured revolvers, the guards fired into the cages as they fled like madmen, throwing themselves flat on the deck and shouting for help.

On the upper gun deck the plot which Little Buddha had revealed to the convicts was carried out in every particular. His cage, near the ship’s prow, was quickly cleared, and its hundred and fifty convicts, after breaking down the companion-way at the main hatchway, threw themselves upon the guards and overwhelmed them by weight of numbers.

Some fifteen of these hapless men lay on the deck mortally wounded, while the other half at length darted from the upper gun deck to the lower gun deck, and thence to the lower deck, where the cells stood, and here they defended themselves with the courage of despair; but at that moment they were caught between two fires. And a frightful cry of victory signalized their destruction: “Chéri-Bibi! The Countess!” No one knew whence they came, but they both plunged into the fray like fiends. The awful woman was as dreadful a sight as Chéri-Bibi himself under the rays of the lanterns which cast a sinister light upon the appalling carnage.

Now the few survivors begged for mercy.

Chéri-Bibi stopped the slaughter.

“We must have hostages. Stop fighting,” he commanded his men on the lower gun deck. And in a voice which drowned all other cries:

“Let these men be dragged into one of the cages and locked in!”

The cages were opened with the keys which were taken from Pascaud and the guards, and the convicts swarmed into the alley-way in a regular crush. They were seeking their prey. Half of them whom Chéri-Bibi drove from behind had to mount to the upper gun deck, where the struggle with the men under de Kerrosgouët’s command had become more desperate than ever.

The Toper himself, standing behind Chéri-Bibi, saw that the dead and dying, both overseers and convicts, and the few guards whose lives had been spared, were dragged to the “financiers’ cage.” And in a trice they were crammed into it helter-skelter and the door locked on them.

Suddenly a voice cried: “Shooters!” And, indeed, rifles were being distributed to the men who were on their way to the upper gun deck; next supplies of cartridges were passed from hand to hand. And the men who had no arms hurried to the place where they were being given out. The distribution was taking place in the Countess’s late cell.

Unseen hands were passing up arms and munitions through the gap by which the Kanaka’s wife had escaped, and men were eagerly laying hold of them. The guards whose duty it was to watch this darksome corner of the ship, this part of the hold in which the first battle against the shadowy figure of Chéri-Bibi had been fought at random, had made for the ladder when they heard the report of firing in the cages, and were massacred with most of their comrades in sight of the cells.

The distribution was effected at this spot because there was no fighting and no danger. When it was completed, two hands were outstretched from the cavity, and a voice begged some one to pull him through to the deck. Then an odd pale little figure appeared with the ingenuous look and the smiling face of a boy who had succeeded in playing a smart trick. On his head was the white cap of a cook’s mate, and the body which followed showed the poor, trembling, timid body of the Dodger. The convicts grasped the meaning of many things when they saw this little scamp among them. They shouted “Hurrah!” while the journeyman baker ran up to the deck yelling:

“Chéri-Bibi ... Chéri-Bibi for ever!”

The fight round the hatchway now simmered down. The men on deck ceased their fire, and in the thick smoke of battle could no longer sight the besiegers at the infernal opening.

The convicts wondered what new plan was in preparation on deck. Obviously it was one that boded them no good.

Chéri-Bibi satisfied himself that the convicts were ready to follow him now that they were well armed. He explained in a few peremptory words that the moment had come to conquer or die. They must dash like a whirlwind on deck, and make short work of the warders.... No quarter in this fight.... Nothing could resist them, and if they had any stomach for the fight the _Bayard_ would be theirs.

While he was speaking in this strain, the ladder was put up in its old place. Then he led them forward. The Countess, intoxicated with the fight, rushed headlong behind him, and then came the Toper, the African, Little Buddha and the rest. The Dodger joined them at the moment when Chéri-Bibi shouted “Up, rebels!”

The great mass of men holding their rifles above their heads bundled themselves into the hatchway. To clamber up the ladder was the work of a moment, but at that very moment a terrible whizzing noise, an amazing quick succession of shots re-echoed, and howls of fury and pain went up from the convicts, who for the most part fell and rolled to the feet of their comrades.

It was the Hotchkiss gun which had entered the struggle. Its small shrapnel, its gleaming glittering bullets, its “little pills” penetrated the flesh, tore the convicts’ ranks, struck the steel plates of the bulkheads and the lower decks, and disseminated death on every hand.

The few men who were uninjured among the first group of convicts fell back, leaving a pile of corpses at the entrance to the cages. Chéri-Bibi was obliged to retreat with the rest. He was not wounded, though, to all appearance, he sought death in this sanguinary encounter in which he seemed to be playing the return match with fate. The Countess pressed one hand against the bulkhead for support, while with the other she wiped with an unconscious gesture the blood from her face. A splinter from a shot had ripped open her forehead. The madness of defeat and death dwelt in her infuriated eyes and screaming mouth.

“We are done for!” growled Chéri-Bibi, while his forces behind him, crowded within the narrow channel of the cages and the ladders, yelled their determination not to die “down there” but “on deck ... on deck.”

The men behind pushed forward the men in front into the radius covered by the Hotchkiss gun, which, fortunately for the convicts, was rather narrow. Nevertheless, more men were killed.

Chéri-Bibi had reckoned without the gun.

Nothing remained but to die in their retreat unless they could succeed in getting out ... and to get out; of it....

Suddenly an idea occurred to Chéri-Bibi.

“Bring the kit bags,” he shouted, “all the blooming lot, and the deputy-warders’ mattresses. We’ll set ’em on fire; a fire as hot as a furnace! They won’t stand it, and we’ll get through. It’s a poor look out for those who funk scorching their paws. Who’s got a light?”

“I have,” said the Dodger, handing him his automatic match-box.

They heaped up the straw mattresses and canvas bags in front of the hatchway, and soon a great and acrid cloud of smoke ascended, and was succeeded by long tongues of flame, and then by a denser mass of smoke, forcing the men on deck to draw back. The Captain and his men had to move away with their Hotchkiss gun to prevent themselves from being suffocated.

Oaths and shouts abounded: “Get at the warders!... Fire! Fire!... To the pumps! Fire! They’ve tricked us by firing the ship.... Ship on fire!... To the pumps, damn and blast it!”

And from this miniature volcano, for such the hatchway became, from this smoking chasm whence issued a clamor of pitiable or savage cries, from amid the smoke as it swept upwards, fiends in human form leapt into view. Some possessed, as it were, wings of flame and flung themselves at the overseers to set them on fire in their turn; others who had divested themselves of all clothing the better to plunge through this furnace, brandished their rifles on high as though they were clubs.... That was how Chéri-Bibi labored with the butt end of his terrible rifle, swooping down on many a head and creating round him a wide reddening circle.

“Forward! ... Forward! ... rebels, ...” he shouted, foaming at the mouth. “Forward! ... They can’t kill the dead!”

Standing at his side was a veritable fury. It was the Countess, who waved her blood-stained hands while her abundant tresses played round her livid temples like serpents. She fought with a cutlass. Then came the Dodger, whose head had been injured by his own rifle, and who had abandoned fighting in order to act as “scout” to Chéri-Bibi and to defend him from an unlucky blow. Like King John’s son at Poitiers, he cried out to Chéri-Bibi during the combat:

“Look to your left!... Look to your right!”

The smoke died down when the mattresses and kit bags blazed up, and from the hatchway, which was now clear, an innumerable and hideous band of men with a thousand heads crept in an unceasing stream.... The inferno was vomiting forth its devils.... The fight was no longer anything but a hand-to-hand struggle in which it was impossible to distinguish one man from another. The Hotchkiss gun was of no service in this indescribable mêlée. The Captain and de Vilène, covered with wounds, continued to fight, yielding their ground by inches and heartening their men by the force of their heroic example.

With his own hand the Captain struck down half a dozen convicts, and he strove to come face to face with Chéri-Bibi, but that elusive individual seemed invulnerable.

Overwhelmed by weight of numbers, half of his men unarmed, Barrachon was forced to give way, and he ordered the retreat when young Sub-Lieutenant de Kerrosgouët fell gloriously beside the Hotchkiss gun which was under his charge. It was necessary to save the gun, to retire to the protection of the second Hotchkiss, and to run out both guns against the rabble who had mastered the entire forecastle deck. That was their only chance of safety.

Suddenly a terrible hail of shot took the sailors and military overseers in the rear. Barrachon and de Vilène turned round, and a simultaneous exclamation of despair escaped from their lips. Above them, on the roof of the chart-room, they sighted three fiends all black and a little man all white. Three coal-trimmers and the journeyman baker, the Dodger, had seized the 47 mm. Hotchkiss, and were turning it on the men on deck, not hesitating, in their frenzy for destruction, to mow down their own men.

Nothing was left to the Captain but to get away with the last of his men to the quarter-deck and there to entrench himself with the other gun.

The Captain ordered the retreat. He could depend on some hundred and fifty unwounded men who would sell their lives dearly.

Drunk with victory, some of them black with powder, others red with blood, Chéri-Bibi’s men were getting ready to rush forward and finish off the remainder of the crew and warders, when a dense smoke issued from the hatchways, and the sinister cry “Ship on fire” caused them to waver.

The conflagration made a barrier between the two forces. And the necessity to arrest the scourge before it could destroy the ship which had cost them so much to conquer, seized the entire mass of insurgents. Under the direction of the Dodger, who knew how to man the pumps, the convicts set to work to extinguish the fire.

At the same time this strange figure who understood more about the ship than any one else, ordered all the entrances which led to the heart of the conflagration to be closed, and the hatches covered with wet tarpaulins. The convicts fell foul of each other, like men possessed, in this great and frightful confusion of dead and dying. Cries and oaths went up in the fast closing night. From the depths below, where the women and children were incarcerated, came heartrending shrieks as though they were being burnt alive. In the after part of the _Bayard_, on the quarter-deck, spasmodic firing still continued. And then it died into silence, for Barrachon and his men had fired their last shot. Every man thought that the end was in sight.

To the unparalleled evils of fire and sword was added yet another: tempest. The roaring of the fire, and the hissing of the water as it evaporated amidships, were succeeded by the howling of the wind which once again had veered to the northwest and was blowing a gale. In the sky, above those figures covered with blood, clouds were gathering from the pale distant horizon, with the coming of an ominous dawn. Tremendous waves already swept the seas and played with the wretched vessel which could not maneuver now that she was without a chief to control her.

With no sort of guidance she could neither keep her head nor sail before the wind nor avoid the violent buffeting of the waves on her quarter.

The demons who came out of the inferno returned to the inferno. Standing on the Captain’s bridge, at the post to which pride and rebellion had raised him, and where he could do nothing for himself or others, nothing but rejoice at the disaster which had befallen them and take the lead in it, Chéri-Bibi was like an evil spirit, with head once more upraised--in defiance--to the God who afflicted him, his own particular God, whom he called _Fatalitas_.

On the deck in the midst of this confused medley of men and sea and skies, a young girl was on her knees praying to the God whom she called “Our Father which art in Heaven,” and beseeching His mercy for all the souls on the ship without exception--convicts, convict guards and Chéri-Bibi.