In Search of an Unknown Race — page 244: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

warm sunrays flashed into the damp interior of the hold. Summoning his fortitude to meet some terrible spec- tacle, Van caught the hatch combings with his hands and swung himself on deck. But his fears were groundless. The only signs of what had taken place were a few splashes of blood on the insides of the bulwarks, which the Kroo was indus- triously scrubbing with a deck broom, while the natives, squatted in the brilliant sunshine, were chattering vol- ubly with every evident appearance of ecstatic joy. As Van knew later, they had slipped through the hatch in the cabin floor while all hands were gathered about the forehatch. Then, arming themselves with clubs and heavers, they had made a sudden rush forward. How many fell before them Van could never find out. But that the captain and Smith were the first victims he had good reason to believe. Two, and possibly three, were suffered to cut loose the boat from the stern davits and make good their escape. Van could see the distant boat rising and falling on the waves, but too far away to tell how many had escaped. ‘‘We make waddy some,” was the only information he could obtain from the grinning crew, and as the boat itself was never heard from, the true facts of the tragedy will probably never be known till the sea gives up its dead. That the Bellingham was nowhere in sight did not surprise Van very much, as he knew that she had prob- ably been put before the gale on the previous night. And what then ? GComichooksse