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When it cleared again the place was a shambles.

Wilson and eight others were wriggling on the top of each other on the floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on that table turn me sick now when I think of it.

We were so cowed by the sight that I think we should have given the job up if it had not been for Prendergast.

He bellowed like a bull and rushed for the door with all that were left alive at his heels.

Out we ran, and there on the poop were the lieutenant and ten of his men.

The swing skylights above the saloon table had been a bit open, and they had fired on us through the slit.

We got on them before they could load, and they stood to it like men; but we had the upper hand of them, and in five minutes it was all over.

My God! Was there ever a slaughter-house like that ship! Prendergast was like a raging devil, and he picked the soldiers up as if they had been children and threw them overboard alive or dead.

There was one sergeant that was horribly wounded and yet kept on swimming for a surprising time, until some one in mercy blew out his brains.

When the fighting was over there was no one left of our enemies except just the warders the mates, and the doctor.

"'It was over them that the great quarrel arose.

There were many of us who were glad enough to win back our freedom, and yet who had no wish to have murder on our souls.

It was one thing to knock the soldiers over with their muskets in their hands, and it was another to stand by while men were being killed in cold blood.

Eight of us, five convicts and three sailors, said that we would not see it done.

But there was no moving Prendergast and those who were with him.

Our only chance of safety lay in making a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box.

It nearly came to our sharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if we wished we might take a boat and go.

We jumped at the offer, for we were already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that there would be worse before it was done.

We were given a suit of sailor togs each, a barrel of water, two casks, one of junk and one of biscuits, and a compass.

Prendergast threw us over a chart, told us that we were shipwrecked mariners whose ship had foundered in Lat.

15 degrees and Long 25 degrees west, and then cut the painter and let us go.

"'And now I come to the most surprising part of my story, my dear son.

The seamen had hauled the fore-yard aback during the rising, but now as we left them they brought it square again, and as there was a light wind from the north and east the bark began to draw slowly away from us.

Our boat lay, rising and falling, upon the long, smooth rollers, and Evans and I, who were the most educated of the party, were sitting in the sheets working out our position and planning what coast we should make for.

It was a nice question, for the Cape de Verdes were about five hundred miles to the north of us, and the African coast about seven hundred to the east.

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