A dying woman's bedside confession revealed the true fate of the square-rigger Madagascar, which had mysteriously vanished from sight in 1853 while transporting a fortune in Australian gold

"I'll kill the first bastard that takes a step!" First Mate Jenkins screamed at the dozen men advancing upon him with marlin pins, knives and lengths of wood.

"We'll kill you!" one of the mutineers returned with a leer, brandishing his knife. "There's gold aboard and we mean to have it!"

While this man, a red-bearded giant, held Jenkins' attention, another man named Manners attempted to get behind the first mate so that he could use the razor-sharp knife be held in his fist.

"You're taking nothing off this ship," Jenkins told the would-be pirates. "I'll see you all hang first!"

The words were barely out of his mouth, when Manners, from behind a mast, hurled the knife at him, burying it deep in his back. The others started forward, but Jenkins, face twisted with pain, fired at the red-bearded mutineer. At that moment, as the man fell dead, the ship's captain rushed up the ladder with a few loyal crew members, all well armed.

Before Manners could retreat from behind the mast, a sailor's bullet cut him down. Jenkins fired again at the mass of howling humanity and a third man dropped, dead before he hit the deck.

Jenkins, mortally wounded, dropped his gun and fell to the deck, dying before the captain or any loyal crewmen could reach his side. In the confusion, the mutineers were quickly overcome. Six of them were captured and ordered thrown into the hold in irons, but three of them, including the ring leader, slipped away.

Captain Fortesjue Harris, master of the thousandton, square-rigged Madagascar, felt that the back of the revolt had been broken.

But at the same time, Joseph Grey, a stowaway who was wanted for murder and robbery in Australia, had gathered the rest of the blood-thirsty mutineers about him in the hold to tell them that the gold could still be theirs.

"The captain will think he's settled our hash," he declared, "and we'll be able to catch him by surprise this time." Quickly, he set about explaining how the men who had been put into irons would have to be released and the ship's crew overcome.

Grey had smuggled himself aboard the Madagascar ana bribed the ship's carpenter, one of his mutineers, into hiding him in his tool box while the police combed Melbourne for him. He was wanted in connection with the murder of four guards and robbery of 10,000 pounds - nearly $50,000 - in gold. The shipment had been on its way from the gold fields of Bendigo when it was attacked by Grey and three other men. His confederates had been captured and slated to hang, but Grey had escaped with his share of the loot, seeking out the vessel as a refuge.

No sooner had the vessel set sail on that August morning in 1853, and Grey had been released from the tool box, then he learned that the ship was carrying 68,390 ounces of gold - well over one million dollars!

Grey, forgetting his earlier take still hidden in the tool box, began to conspire to obtain this new gold supply, which was bound for the Bank of England.

Aboard the ship, he learned, were about 90 passengers and a crew of about 40, most of the seamen drafted from the scum along the waterfront dives; (most of Melbourne's seamen had deserted the waterfront for the gold fields of Ballarat and Bendigo, making it necessary for Capt. Harris to take what he could get).

From this crew, Grey began to recruit his band of killers, as well as from a number of ugly ex-convicts who were among the steerage passengers.

"There's gold enough for all of us to live in luxury for the rest of our lives," he told his followers. "We'll take over the ship, sink her when we're close to land, and set ourselves up with a South American empire of our own."

The first attempt at piracy, of course, was defeated, but Capt. Harris' reassurances to his passengers turned out to be no more than hollow promises a few days later when Grey and his band of villains struck again.

That evening, Capt. Harris was dining in the salon with the first class passengers when a shot was fired on deck. Many of the guests aboard the vessel reacted in fright, recalling the aborted mutiny.

An instant later, Joseph Grey and a dozen of the conspirators burst into the salon, most of them armed with pistols taken from the loyal crewmen. The pistol shot had been Grey's signal for his men, strategically placed, to overpower the watch on deck, the helmsman and all others who had displayed loyalty to the ship. At that very moment, most of them lay dead or wounded on the deck, while still others, thrown overboard by the mutineers, were screaming for help in the ship's frothy wake.