ould call the murders, and
it remained but to divide the spoil.

"Lower away the launch, you John!" cried Black, "and take every
shilling you can lay hands on. You hear me?--and hang up that skipper
for a thin-skinned fool."

"By thunder, I'm yours all along," replied "Roaring John "; and then he
sang out, "Hands for the launch!"

"You'd better go as cox," said Osbart to me, "you'll be amused"; and
suggested it to Black, who turned upon me a look almost of hate.

"Yes, he shall go," he cried; "if we swing, he shall swing, the
preaching lubber! Let him get aboard, or I'll kick him there."

I had loathing at the thought of it, but might as well have put a
pistol to my head there and then as to have refused. They bundled me
into the launch, and I sat shivering at the prospect of the terrors on
the deck; but they would not leave me when they came alongside, and
"Roaring John" himself drove me up the ladder which was put out
amidships. Seven of us at last stood on the bridge, and were face to
face with the captain of the _Bellonic_, and four of his officers.

I have said that I feared the terrors of that deck, but the reality
surpassed the conception.

It was a very babel of sounds, of groans, of weeping. The ship's
surgeon himself seemed paralysed before the sight of the carnage around
him. You looked along the length of the vessel, and it was as though
you looked upon the scene of a bloody battle, for there were dead
almost in heaps, and wounded screaming, and streams of blood, and
fragments of wreckage as though the ship had been under fire for many
hours. But above all this terror, I know of nothing which struck me
with such fearful sorrow as the sight of a fair young English girl
lying by the door of the great saloon, her arms extended, her nut-brown
hair soaked in her own blood, while a man knelt over her, and you could
see his tears falling upon her dead face, and his ravings were
incoherent and almost those of a maniac. At the sight of us he jumped
to his feet, and shrieked "Murderers!" so continuously that the echo of
his cry rang in my ears that day and for many days.

Meanwhile another scene was passing on the bridge between the man John
and the captain of the _Bellonic_.

"What do you want aboard of my ship?" cried the latter; and "Roaring
John" answered him with a mocking leer:

"We've come aboard to hang you, to begin on!"

The men with the young officer cocked their revolvers at this, and I
said