I dropped the oars, let fall the sail, and stood with my eyes fixed upon
her, considering a little. Would the men murder me if I boarded her? Or
would they not fill my empty jar for me on my beseeching them, on my
pointing to my frothing lip as the yellow man had done, on my asking for
water only, promising to depart at once? Why, it was better to be
butchered by their cutlasses than to perish thus. I felt mad at the
thought of a long sweet draught of wine and water out of a cold
pannikin, and rendered utterly defiant, absolutely reckless by my
sufferings, and by the dream and allurement of a drink of water, I fell
to the oars again, and rowed the boat alongside the wreck.
I now noticed for the first time that the mast and sail which the
fellows had erected were gone. Indeed the mast lay over the side, and
the sail floated black under it in the water. I listened; all was hushed
as death in the motionless hulk. I secured the painter of the boat to
the chain plate, sprang on to the deck and stood looking a minute. Close
to the wheel lay the figure of a man. He was sound asleep as I might
suppose, his head pillowed on his arm, the other arm over his face in a
posture of sheltering it. He was the only one of the three visible.
Wildly reckless always and goaded with the agony of thirst I went
straight to the hatch and dropped into the cabin. The blackness was that
of a coal-mine, but I knew the way, and after a little groping found the
pantry door and entered. With an eager hand I sought for a candle, found
one and lighted it, and in a few minutes my thirst was assuaged and I
was standing with clasped uplifted hands thanking God for the exquisite
comfort of the draught. Yet I drank cautiously. My need made me believe
that I could have drained a cask to its dregs, but I forced my dreadful
craving to be satisfied with scarce more than a quarter of a pint. The
drink relaxed the muscles of my throat and I was able to eat. Afterwards
I drank a little again, and then I felt a new man.
I stayed about twenty minutes in the pantry, in which time I heard no
kind of noise saving a dim creak now and again from the hold of the
wreck. Extinguishing the candle I entered the cabin and stood debating
with myself on the course I should follow. Water I must have: should I
fill a jar and carry it stealthily to the boat and be off and take my
chance of managing the business unheard? Yes, I would do that, and if I
aroused the sleepers, why, seeing that I was willing to go they might
not refuse me a supply of drink....
I was musing thus when there was the sound of a yawn on deck. At that
moment I remembered the array of cutlasses that embellished the cabin
ceiling. It was the noise the fellow made, the perception that one of
the three at all events was awake with his mates somewhere at hand to
swiftly alarm, which put the thought of those cutlasses into my head, or
it is fifty to one if in the blackness of that interior I should have
recollected them. I sprang upon the table and in a moment was gripping a
blade. The very feel of it, the mere sense of being armed, sent the
blood rushing through my veins as though to some tonic of miraculous
potency. “Now,” thought I, setting my teeth, “let the ruffians fall upon
me if they will. If my life is to be taken it shall not be for the want
of an English arm to defend it.”
I jumped on to the deck, went stealthily to the foot of the steps and
listened. The man yawned again, and I heard the tread of his foot as he
moved, whence I suspected him to be the yellow boatswain, the others
being unshod, though to be sure there were shoes enough in the ’tween
decks for them had they a mind to help themselves. As I sent a look up
through the lifted corner of tarpaulin over the hatch I spied the
delicate, illusive gray of daybreak in the air, and so speedy was the
coming of the dawn that it lay broad with the sun close under the rim of
the horizon ere I could form a resolution whilst listening to make sure
that he who was on deck continued alone. Then hearing him yawn again and
no sound of the others reaching my ears, I mounted the steps and gained
the deck.
It was the Portuguese boatswain, as I had imagined. He was in the act of
seating himself much in the same place where I had seen him sleeping
when I had boarded the vessel; but he instantly saw me as I arose, and
remained motionless and rigid as though blasted by a flash of lightning.
His jaw dropped, his hideous little eyes protruded bright with horror
and fright from their sockets, and his yellow face changed into a sort
of greenish tint like mottled soap or the countenance of a man in a fit.
No doubt he supposed me a spectre, rising as I did in that way out of
the cabin when the rogue would imagine me a hundred miles off, or
floating a corpse in the water, and I dare say but for the paralysis of
terror that had fixed his jaw some pious sentences would have dropped
from him. For my part I hung in the wind undecided, at a loss to act. I
sent a look over my shoulder to observe if the others were about, and
the movement of my head seemed like the release of him from the
constraint of my eye. He leapt into an erect posture and rushed to the
side, saw the boat, uttered a cry for all the world resembling the
rough, saw-like yell of the albatross stooping to some bait in the
foaming eddies of a wake, in a bound came back to the binnacle, the body
of which stood, though the compass, hood and glass were gone, and
thrusting his hand into it pulled out a pistol which he levelled at me.
The weapon flashed as I ran at him. Ere he had time to draw the cutlass
which dangled at his hip, I had buried the blade, the large heavy hilt
of which I grasped with both hands, deep in his neck, crushing clean
through his right jaw; and even whilst he was in the act of falling I
had lifted and brought the cutlass down upon him again, this time
driving the edge of it so deep into his skull that the weight of him as
he dropped dead dragged the weapon out of my hand, and it was a wrestle
of some moments to free the blade.
I swept round fully prepared for the confrontment of the others, who, I
took it, if they were sleeping below, would rush up on deck on hearing
the report of the pistol. My head was full of blood; I felt on fire from
my throat to my feet. God knows why or how it was, for I should have
imagined of myself that the taking of a human life would palsy my
muscles with the horror of the thing to the weakness of a woman’s arm;
and yet in the instant of my rounding, prepared for, panting for a sight
of the other two, I seemed conscious of the strength of a dozen men in
me.
All was still. The sun had risen in splendor; the ocean was a running
surface of glory under him, and the blue of the south had the dark
tenderness of violet with the gushing into it of the hot and sparkling
breeze which had sprung up in the north with the coming of the morn.
Where were the others? My eyes reeled as they went from the corpse of
the Portuguese to the pistol he had let drop. I picked it up; it was a
rude weapon belonging to the armory of the _Corsaire_. I conjectured
that the miscreant would not have thus armed himself without providing a
stock of ammunition at hand, and on putting my arm into the binnacle
stand I found, sure enough, a powder-horn and a parcel of
pistol-bullets. I carefully loaded the weapon, narrowly seeing to the
priming, all the while constantly glancing along the deck and listening.
Then with the pistol in one hand and the cutlass in the other, I stepped
below, furious and eager for a sight of the dead man’s mates.
The lifted tarpaulin let the morning sunshine fall fair into the cabin,
and now I saw that which had before been invisible to me; I mean a great
blood-stain upon the deck, with a spattering of blood-drops and spots of
more hideous suggestion yet, round about. A thin trail of blood went
from the large stain upon the floor along through the passage betwixt
the berths, and so to the main hatch. Ha! thought I, _this_ signifies
murder! I found nothing in the cabins. The door of the berth in which
the chest of gold stood was locked, but on putting my whole weight
against it with knee and shoulder it flew open. The contents of the
place were as I had before taken notice of; and there were no signs here
of either dead or living men. I regained the deck, and walking forward
observed a thin line of blood going from the coamings of the main hatch
to the side. It was the continuation and termination of the trail below,
and most unmistakably denoted the passage of a bleeding body borne
through the hatch and cast overboard. I walked further forward yet, and
on the forecastle witnessed another wide stain of blood. It looked
fresher than the other--nay, it was not yet dry, and the heat went out
of my body, and ice-cold shudders swept through my limbs as I turned my
back upon it, sick, dizzy, and trembling.
Those horrible marks gave me the whole story as fully as though the dead
brute aft had recited it to me at large ere I struck him down. He had
murdered his mates one after the other to be alone with the gold. It had
been murder cold and deliberate, I was sure. There were no signs of a
struggle; there were no hints of any previous conflict in the person of
the yellow Portuguese. It was as though he had crept behind the men one
after another, and struck them down with a chopper. Indeed I was as sure
of this as though I had witnessed the deed; and there was the chest of
gold in the cabin to explain the reason of it. How he hoped to manage if
he fell in with a ship (and I know not what other expectation of coming
off with his life he could have formed) it is useless to conjecture.
Some plausible tale no doubt he would have taken care to prepare,
claiming the gold as his by law of treasure-trove.
I let fall the weapons, and lay over a little strip of bulwark, panting
for breath. My eyes were upon the water over the side, but a minute
after, on directing them at the sea-line, I spied the sails of a ship, a
square of pearl glimmering in the blue distance, and slightly leaning
from the hot and brilliant breeze gushing fair down upon her starboard
beam. Scarce had my mind had time to recognize the object as a ship,
when it vanished; a reddish gloom boiled up mist-like all about me; the
ocean to a mile away from the side of the wreck turned of the deep
crimson of blood, spinning round like a teetotum; then followed
blackness, and I remember no more....