Burns had served as second mate on a sailing vessel, and thought he
could take us back, at least into more traveled waters. We decided
to head back to New York. I got the code book from the captain's cabin,
and we agreed to run up the flag, union down, if any other vessel came
in sight. I got the code word for "Mutiny--need assistance," and I
asked the mate if he would signal if a vessel came near enough. But
he turned sullen and refused to answer.
I find it hard to recap calmly the events of that morning: the three
still and shrouded figures, prone on deck; the crew, bareheaded,
standing around, eyeing each other stealthily, with panic ready to
leap free and grip each of them by the throat; the grim determination,
the reason for which I did not yet know, to put the first mate in
irons; and, over all, the clear sunrise of an August morning on the
ocean, rails and decks gleaming, an odor of coffee in the air, the
joyous lift and splash of the bowsprit as the Ella, headed back on
her course, seemed to make for home like a nag for the stable.
Surely none of these men, some weeping, all grieving, could be the
fiend who had committed the crimes. One by one, I looked in their
faces--at Burns, youngest member of the crew, a blue-eyed,
sandy-haired Scot; at Clarke and Adams and Charlie Jones, old in
the service of the Turner line; at McNamara, a shrewd little
Irishman; at Oleson the Swede. And, in spite of myself, I could not
help comparing them with the heavy-shouldered, sodden-faced man below
in his cabin, the owner of the ship.
One explanation came to me, and I leaped at it--the possibility of
a stowaway hidden in the hold, some maniacal fugitive who had found
in the little cargo boat's empty hull ample room to hide. The men,
too, seized at the idea. One and all volunteered for what might prove
to be a dangerous service.
I chose Charlie Jones and Clarke as being most familiar with the ship,
and we went down into the hold. Clarke carried a lantern. Charlie
Jones held Singleton's broken revolver. I carried a belaying pin.
But, although we searched every foot of space, we found nothing. The
formaldehyde with which Turner had fumigated the ship clung here
tenaciously, and, mixed with the odors of bilge water and the
indescribable heavy smells left by tropical cargoes, made me dizzy
and ill.
We were stumbling along, Clarke with the lantern, I next, and Charlie
Jones behind, on our way to the ladder again, when I received a
stunning blow on the back of the head. I turned dizzy, expecting
nothing less than sudden death, when it developed that Jones, having
stumbled over a loose plank, had fallen forward, the revolver in his
outstretched hand striking my head.