Dorsett and Betsy and most of the other women, though weakened by the relentless torment of starvation, could not bring themselves to survive on the flesh of others. A rain squall came up in the afternoon and slaked their thirst, but the hunger pangs never let up.
Ramsey came over and spoke to Dorsett. “The captain would like a word with you.”
The highwayman accompanied the first officer to where Scaggs was lying, his back against the aft mast. Surgeon-Superintendent Gorman was binding up the captain’s rib cage with a torn shirt. Before the dead were rolled into the sea, the ship’s surgeon stripped the bodies of their clothes to use as bandages. Scaggs looked up at Dorsett, his face taut with pain.
“I want to thank you, Mr. Dorsett, for your timely warning. I daresay the honest people who are still left on this hellish vessel owe their lives to you.”
“I’ve led a wicked life, Captain, but I don’t mingle with foul-smelling rabble.”
“When we reach New South Wales, I’ll do my best to persuade the governor to commute your sentence.”
“I’m grateful to you, Captain. I’m under your orders.”
Scaggs stared at the small knife that was shoved into Dorsett’s belt-sash. “Is that your only weapon?”
“Yes, sir. It performed admirably last night.”
“Give him a spare saber,” Scaggs said to Ramsey. “We’re not through with those dogs yet.”
“I agree,” said Dorsett. “They’ll not have the same fury without Jake Huggins to lead them, but they’re too unhinged by thirst to give up. They’ll try again after dark.”
His words were prophetic. For reasons known only to men deranged by lack of food and water, the convicts assaulted the defenders two hours after the sunset. The attack was not as fierce as the night before. Wraithlike figures reeled against each other, recklessly clubbing and slashing, the bodies of convicts, sailors and soldiers intermingling as they fell.
The convicts’ resolve had been weakened by another day on the raft without food or drink, and their resistance suddenly faded and broke as the defenders counterattacked. The enfeebled convicts stopped and then stumbled back. Scaggs and his faithful seamen smashed into their center as Dorsett, along with Sheppard’s few remaining infantrymen, struck from the flank. In another twenty minutes it was all over.
Fifty-two died that night. With the dawn, only twenty-five men and three women were left, out of the seventy-eight from the night before sixteen convicts, including Jess Dorsett, Betsy Fletcher and two other women; two soldiers and ten of the Gladiator’s crew, including Captain Scaggs. First Officer Ramsey was among the dead. Surgeon-Superintendent Gorman was mortally wounded and passed on later that afternoon like a lamp that slowly runs out of oil. Dorsett had received a nasty gash in his right thigh, and Scaggs had suffered a broken collarbone to add to his broken ribs. Amazingly, Betsy had emerged with only minor bruises and cuts.
The convicts were thoroughly beaten; there wasn’t one who didn’t suffer from ugly wounds. The insane battle for the raft of the Gladiator was over.
By the tenth day of their grisly ordeal, another six had died. Two young lads, a cabin boy no more than twelve and a sixteen-year-old soldier, decided to seek death by throwing themselves into the sea. The other four were convicts who perished from their wounds. It was as if the rapidly dwindling number of survivors were watching a terrifying vision. The sun’s blazing torment returned like a burning fever accompanied by delirium.
On day twelve they were down to eighteen. Those who could still move were in rags, their bodies covered with wounds from the massacre, faces disfigured by the burning sun, skin covered with sores from scraping against the constantly moving planking and immersion in saltwater. They were far beyond despondency, and their hollow eyes began to see visions. Two seamen swore they saw the Gladiator, dove off the raft and swam toward the imaginary ship until they went under or were taken by the ever present Executioner and his voracious friends.
Hallucinations conjured up every image from banquet tables laden with food and drink, to populated cities or homes none had visited since childhood. Scaggs fancied he was sitting in front of a fireplace with his wife and children in his cottage overlooking the harbor at Aberdeen.
He suddenly stared at Dorsett through strange eyes and said, “We have nothing to fear. I have signaled the Admiralty and they have sent a rescue ship.”
In as much of a stupor as the captain, Betsy asked him, “Which pigeon did you use to send your message, the black or the gray?”
Dorsett’s cracked and peeling lips curled in a painful smile. Amazingly, he had managed to keep his wits and had assisted the few seamen who could still move about in repairing damage to the raft. He found a few scraps of canvas and erected a small awning over Scaggs while Betsy tended to the captain’s injuries and showed him the kindest attention. The sea captain, the highwayman and the thief struck up a friendship as the long hours dragged on.
His navigational instruments having been lost over the side during the fighting, Scaggs had no idea of their position. He ordered his men to make an attempt at catching fish using twine and nails for hooks. Bait was human flesh. The smaller fish completely ignored the offer of free food. Surprisingly, even the sharks failed to show an interest.
Dorsett tied a rope to the hilt of a saber and thrust it into the back of a large shark that swam close to the raft. Lacking his former strength to fight the monster of the deep, he wrapped the free end of the rope around a mast. Then he waited for the shark to die before dragging it on board. His only reward was an empty saber blade that was bent into a ninety-degree angle. Two sailors tried attaching bayonets to poles as spears. They punctured several sharks that did not seem at all disturbed by their wounds.
They had given up attempting to catch a meal when later that afternoon a large school of mullet passed under the raft. Between one and three feet long, they proved far easier to spear and throw on the deck of the raft than the sharks. Before the school swam past, seven cigar shaped bodies with forked tails were flopping on the waterlogged planks.
“God hasn’t forsaken us,” mumbled Scaggs, staring at the silvery fish. “Mullet usually inhabit shallow seas. I’ve never seen them in deep water.”
“It’s as though he sent them directly to us,” murmured Betsy, her eyes wide at the sight of her first meal in nearly two weeks.
Their hunger was so great and the number of fish so meager that they added the flesh of a woman who had died only an hour before. It was the first time Scaggs, Dorsett and Betsy had touched human flesh. Somehow eating one of their own seemed oddly justified when mixed with the fish. And since the taste was partially disguised it also seemed less disgusting.
Another gift arrived with a rain squall that took nearly an hour to pass over and provided them with a catch of two gallons of water.
Despite having their strength temporarily renewed, despondency was still painted on their faces. The wounds and contusions, irritated by the saltwater, caused unending agony. And there was still the sun, which continued to torture them. The air was stifling and the heat intolerable. The nights brought relief and cooler temperatures. But some of the raft’s passengers could not endure the misery of one more day. Another five, four convicts and the last soldier, quietly slipped into the sea and perished quickly.
By the fifteenth day, only Scaggs, Dorsett, Betsy Fletcher, three sailors and four convicts, one a woman, were left alive. They were beyond caring. Death seemed unavoidable. The spark of self-preservation had all but gone out. The mullet was long gone, and although those who died had sustained the living, the lack of water and the torrid heat made it impossible to hold out for more than another forty-eight hours before the raft would float empty of life.