"Yes."
He was silent for a moment, and then he laughed. It was the cracked
laugh of a man on the brink.
"Eighteen mouths to fill, and nothing to fill 'em with. You've said
it, Preble; I'm nothing but a dead weight in the boat--a bump on a log.
I'll remove one of the hungry mouths," and before I had the slightest
idea of what he meant, he sprang up and hurled himself into the lagoon.
Thinking that the plunge was only the mad impulse of a half-crazed
drunkard denied, and hoping that a salt-water soaking would bring him
to his senses, I made no move at first. But when I saw him deliberately
wade out over his depth and strike out with strong swimming strokes for
the reef over which the ground swell was breaking, I remembered the
black fin Grisdale and I had seen and shouted a warning.
"Come back here, you fool!" I called. "There's a man-eater in there!
Come back, I say!"
I don't suppose he heard me; if he did, he paid no attention. I
confess, with decent shame, that I hesitated when it became evident
that he meant to carry out his threat of effacing himself. His life
was of little benefit, to himself or to others, and if he lived, it
would only be to add the care of a madman to our other calamities. I
have been glad a thousand times since that this was merely a passing
thought. The real motivating impulse came from the sight of a V-shaped
ripple racing diagonally across the lagoon to intercept the swimmer;
a ripple plainly discernible on the starlit surface of the reef-bound
inlet. It was the shark again.
What happened after that will remain a nightmare to me as long as
memory serves. I was stripping my coat and kicking off my shoes when
Van Dyck came bursting out of the wood behind me.
"Who is that out there?" he gasped.
"Ingerson--he's gone off his head!"
Without another word Van Dyck ran down to the shore and took the water
in a clean dive. When he came up he was within arm's reach of the
dipsomaniac. There was a fierce grapple and both men went under. My
heart was in my mouth. I made sure the shark had taken one or the other
of them. But the end was not yet. As I waded out armpit deep, splashing
and making all the noise I could in the hope of scaring the great fish,
two heads bobbed up a few yards away, and I saw that Bonteck had either
choked or drowned the would-be suicide into submission and was swimming
in with him.
A few quick strokes gave me my chance to help, and together we dragged
Ingerson ashore. He was half-drowned and was otherwise little more than
a bedraggled wreck of a man. While we were working over him, Van Dyck
explained--briefly. Edith Van Tromp had told him that she had seen
Ingerson creeping into the wood on all fours, with a knife in his hand,
and he--Bonteck--had followed. All day he had been suspecting that
Ingerson was on the edge of delirium.
"You'll have to give him some of the hair of the dog that bit him, or
we'll have a frantic maniac in our midst," I said. "Is there any liquor
left?"
"A little. Stay with him and I'll go and get it."
He was gone only a few minutes, and by the time he came back, Ingerson
was able to sit up. We fed him brandy in small doses, and as the fiery
stuff got in its work some degree of sanity returned. Apparently he
knew quite well what he had tried to do, and was surlily regretful that
the attempt had failed.
"You made a bonehead play, Van Dyck," he shivered. "I was trying to do
a decent thing to wind up with, and you blocked it. You'd better have
let me alone."
Van Dyck did not reply, and the drink maniac went on monotonously:
"I wanted to wind it up. Old John B.'s got me. I didn't believe it, but
the last three days have shown me where I was heading in. As long as
you can keep me half lit up ... but you can't do that forever."
"No," said Bonteck gravely; "this is the last bottle."
Ingerson's head had fallen forward upon his breast.
"One more--little nip, and then--perhaps--I--can--go--to--sleep," he
mumbled; and at this we gave him the sleeping potion and in another
half-minute he was dead to the world.
Hard-hearted as it may seem, we made short work of disposing of him.
We were a long quarter of a mile from the camp, and, short of carrying
him, there was no way to get him there. So we merely dragged his limp
and sodden bulk up to a little open space under the trees and left it.
"I'm beginning to think he was more than half right about the bonehead
play," said Van Dyck sourly as he carefully hid the last of the brandy
bottles. "It is only a question of a little time--and his swigging of
the last thimbleful of the stuff--when we'll have to hog-tie him in
self-defense. Let's do a sentry-go around to the far end of things. We
may as well dry out tramping as any other way."
And it was not until he said this that I realized that we, too, were as
sodden as the limp figure we had hauled up under the palms.