"Who's that, Rube?—there, by the hatch," whispered Sallie, and pointed to where a pair of white eyeballs had been uncannily visible for a moment and then disappeared. She was nervous and overwrought in the midst of so many uncertainties.
Yoxall had stepped quickly in front of her. He caught sight of a shadow crawling away in the dark on the deck below.
"One of the niggers," he told her, and turned. "He's come scouting aft more than once while you were ashore. Most of the men are asleep, I suppose, but there are sure to be some standing guard—they won't run any risk of being caught napping by Captain Dove."
She fell into step with him again, and presently, pacing the poop at his side, slipped an arm into one of his. He shivered a little.
"Aren't you feeling all right?" she asked anxiously. "You're not going to have fever, are you?"
"No, lass," he answered at once. "Not much! I'm all right, of course. It would never do for me to fall sick now, would it?"
"It would be the last straw!" she agreed, and shivered also. For she was counting on him in case the worst should come to the worst.
"I don't know what I'd do without you, Rube," she said. And the big Englishman blushed like any boy as she peered up into his face. "You're the only real friend I have in the world. If it weren't for you—I'd be quite desperate; I'm so unhappy here now."
Reuben Yoxall pressed the arm that lay within his, and gulped. "Then why won't you come away out of it, Sallie?" he asked in a husky voice he could scarcely control. "It wouldn't be so very difficult—if Captain Dove just manages to keep the men in hand till we make some port. And we must call somewhere soon, for we're short of coal.
"I have some money laid by—I'll work harder than ever for you. There's a snug little farm in Cumberland that one of these days will be mine, and till then the old folk would make you and me more than welcome there." He was speaking very quickly, bent on making the most of that unusual opportunity.
"I'm not much of a man, I know," he went on, "but—such as I am, I'm yours. And I'll always be yours, to do whatever you like with. You might come to care more for me, Sallie, if you knew me better. Will you not try? Just give me the chance, and I'll soon have you safely out of the Old Man's clutches. But—so long as you insist on sticking to him, I can't do any more for you than I'm doing."
Her eyes grew dim as she thought of the dog-like devotion which he had shown her, although she had so often told him that she could never repay it as he would have liked.
"I wish I could, Rube," she assured him again, "but—I can't. I'mnotungrateful, and I hate to hurt you, but—I just can't. And you wouldn't want me to sell myself—even for a home and a husband, would you, Rube? I'll never marry anyone. Jasper Slyne says that Captain Dove's going to give me to him—but he doesn't know.... And—I'm not afraid."
Reuben Yoxall sighed, very softly. But she heard, and her own heart grew heavier. Life had become so difficult, and there was still so much to be done, so many troubles to think about, while she did not even know yet what Captain Dove was going to do next.
She had just finished telling Yoxall about the man in the scarlet mask and what she had promised to do for him, when sounds of stealthy bustle from forward told her that the mutineers were once more mustering on deck. She called down to Captain Dove, and he shortly came up from the saloon, followed by Jasper Slyne in a neutral-tinted, workmanlike semi-uniform, at whose belt hung a heavy-calibre Colt revolver.
Under the sharp spur of necessity, Captain Dove appeared to have quite overcome the physical weakness by which he had been oppressed. He stepped briskly to the stair-head rail and thence looked down on the shadowy, moving mass of armed men who had by that time gathered at the after-hatch again. Aware of his presence, they ceased to shuffle about. A tense silence ensued, and Captain Dove cleared his throat.
"Are all hands aft?" he asked sharply, and "Ay, ay, sir," a voice answered. "All hands but the engine-room crew. D'ye want them too?"
"I do not," he declared, and Sallie felt dumbly thankful that the engineers and their underlings were still, apparently, loyal to him.
"Where's Mr. Hobson—and the third mate?" he demanded, and, "Here," answered simultaneously two other very sullen, suspicious voices.
"Listen, then, all of you," ordered Captain Dove, bristling in the dark at that traitorous pair, and, raising his voice again, "I've got a fine plum ripe for your picking to-night, lads!" cried he at his heartiest. "There's a caravan camped ashore here, on its way to the Rio de Oro, with close on a hundred camel-loads of such things as silk and ivory—and jewels—and gold—and girls. I got a word of it from a friend of mine at the Rio when we were in there, and—now's our chance! You can see the flare of the camp-fires on the sky beyond the beach. I've been in here before and I know the place. If you follow me now as you've followed me in the past, I'll guarantee that you'll open your eyes at what's waiting for you ashore."
Slyne, safe in the background, listening, laughed furtively to himself.
"But—if you're going back on me now, I give it up. Strike a light and put a bullet through me right away, if you feel like that. I've only one hand—I won't lift even that against you. And my share of what little money there is on board you can divide among you."
A general murmur of approval greeted this blatant speech. And not even the two malcontent mates could pick any hole in that proposal. A faint crimson glow amid the darkness beyond the surf on the shore served to corroborate his statement in part. That he meant to accompany them was his strongest guarantee of good faith. They were evidently ready and willing, for such a prospect as he had held out to them, to follow him wherever he liked to lead them. The two mates began to tell the men off to the boats and get these swung outboard. A temporary atmosphere of peace and good-will prevailed.
Captain Dove turned to Reuben Yoxall. "You'll stay on board," he whispered very brusquely, "in charge of the ship. I'll tell the chief engineer to lend you two or three men, and you'll see to it thattheydon't lay their hands on any more guns.
"You'll stick by me," he told Slyne, in the background, and Slyne merely shrugged his shoulders impatiently as the old man passed on to where Sallie was waiting to hear what her part was to be. She did not know in the least what to make of his newly-declared intentions.
"Am I to go with you?" she asked on the spur of the moment. And Captain Dove stared at her.
"No, you arenot," he declared emphatically. "D'you want to be shot—or kidnapped—or what! Get away down below, girl, and stay there till I come aboard again. You must be mad!"
She turned obediently toward the companion-hatch, and stopped there. He went forward then, the men making way for him readily, and disappeared into the engine-room. When he climbed carefully back on deck through the fiddley-hatch in the skylight, he found all the boats afloat and only one boat's crew remaining on board, under charge of the second mate, Hobson, with the evident aim of making sure that he did not somehow give them the slip or otherwise take any advantage of them. In response to a shout from him, Jasper Slyne went jauntily forward, and, with commendable promptitude, let himself down the falls overside. One of these, unhooked, served Captain Dove for a sling, and he was soon seated at the boat's tiller. The men followed swiftly, and the second mate went last, no doubt satisfied by then that all would be well.
"Give way, lads!" cried Captain Dove to those at the sweeps, "and we'll show the others the short road ashore. I'm in no end of a hurry to get what's coming to me from that caravan."
Midnight lay very black on the bight where theOlive Branchwas riding easily to a single anchor; as the dark hours sped they seemed to grow always darker. The boats which had just put off from her were almost instantly hidden from Sallie's sight. She stepped quietly out on deck beside Reuben Yoxall.
"Rube," she said in a low, determined voice. "I must be going too, now. Will you help me to get out the canvas boat?"
He stared at her, as Captain Dove had done, and swallowed down a lump in his throat.
"It's madness now!" he declared. "But—I'll go myself. You must stay where you are. It would be worse than madness for you—"
She was smiling very gratefully up into his unhappy, stubborn face.
"We'll go together, Rube," she said, "or not at all. And, even although it does seem hopeless, I know you wouldn't want me to break my promise. So you get the boat launched while I go and tell Mr. Brasse."
She turned and ran lightly down the steps and along the main-deck, leaving the mate, sorely perturbed and uncertain, to carry out her instructions or not, as he chose. As she reached the engine-room skylight on the quarter-deck an unobtrusive shadow emerged from it and would have passed her with a nod on its way toward the bridge.
"Mr. Brasse," she said appealingly, and it halted to peer at her through a single eye-glass, after touching its cap in a very precise salute.
"Miss Sallie?" it answered in a surprised but courteous tone which told that the speaker was, or had once been, a gentleman.
"I'm going ashore," she went on in a hurry, "and Mr. Yoxall is going with me. Will you look after things for him until we get back? Every one else has gone already."
"I have Captain Dove's orders to be on the bridge—for another purpose," the chief engineer of theOlive Branchinformed her, "and I'll do my best, of course, to make sure that nothing goes wrong in the chief mate's absence. But—is it safe for you—"
"Quite safe," she assured him. "And—Mr. Brasse, if I bring—I'm going ashore to try to save a man—a white man the Arabs mean to murder to-night. If I manage to bring him on board, will you help me to hide him?—so that Captain Dove won't know?"
The chief engineer of theOlive Branchwas obviously much perplexed. But he was also obviously much better disposed toward Sallie than to Captain Dove.
"If he's willing to work in the stokehold," he stipulated, "I don't think Captain Dove would ever know he's on board the ship. And then he can slip ashore at the first safe port we manage to make."
Sallie's lower lip trembled a little. She did not quite know how to thank the punctilious engineer who had proved himself such a friend in need. And time was passing.
"You're always very good to me, Mr. Brasse," she said timidly.
"Not at all," he returned with formal politeness, and, having saluted again, went on his own way toward the bridge.
When Sallie got back to the poop she found Reuben Yoxall awaiting her there and the canvas boat already afloat. The mate, however slow-witted, was smart enough in all his movements once he had made up his mind. He helped her over the side without any more words, and was soon driving the light boat along a straight, swift line for the landing-place.
Sallie's sense of direction enabled her to show him that, and also brought them safely across the bar into the lagoon where the other boats from theOlive Branchwere lying empty, afloat. The third mate and some of the men had seemingly been left there in charge of them. Sallie caught sight of the former's sullen, furtive features in the sudden, foolhardy light of a match he was holding over the pipe whose bowl his hands hid. And there were shapes moving about him. She laid a shaky hand on one of Yoxall's, and the oar in his, dipping, shifted their course.
The boom of the breakers, behind them, killed all other sound. But she lifted a finger to her lips, and he proved sufficiently quick-witted then. Between them, they beached their own boat in the dark a couple of hundred yards nearer the camp, and waded ashore with it, and left it there, up-side down on the sand.
The same magnetic instinct which had brought them safely across the bar to the beach led her almost straight to the mouth of the narrow ravine through which Captain Dove and she had reached the red-haired Emir's camp. And Reuben Yoxall followed her, blind, through the night.
"It was here that he was to meet us," she whispered breathlessly, her heart in her mouth. They had met no one at all by the way, and there seemed to be no one there.
Yoxall scowled about him, unseeingly, and bit his lip, in helpless dissatisfaction with everybody and everything. Then he sniffed inquiringly, and in an instant all his relaxed muscles were taut again. A faint whiff of tobacco-smoke had reached his nostrils on the hot, humid night-air.
Sallie was aware of it too, and had snatched at his hand, to draw him on tiptoe toward the base of the great rock-wall that cropped up out of the sand there. They reached its shelter unseen and unheard as a harsh, suppressed voice spoke from round the corner, within the velvet-black mouth of the gorge. It was Hobson's, the second mate's.
"Put out that pipe," it ordered furiously, and was answered by a low, mocking laugh. There followed the sound of a smashing blow, and a short, sharp struggle that was interrupted by a muffled shout from high overhead. "Hobson ahoy!"
It was Captain Dove who had called cautiously down from the summit of the ridge at one side of the ravine, and the second mate panted a quick response.
"You can get a move on now," cried the old man above the roar of the surf. "The others will all be in position by the time you've pushed through. Open fire as soon as ever you sight the camp. D'ye hear?"
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the second mate, the habit of years still strong upon him, and went on to issue his own commands in the curt growl of custom. The fellow who had lighted a pipe in defiance of him was apparently quelled.
It seemed that he meant to leave some of his men to guard that end of the gorge. "And you'll keep a sharp look-out," he instructed them very threateningly. "If we're trapped in this damned tunnel there will be all hell to pay—and you'll pay it!
"Move on now, in front. Feel your way with your bayonets. And don't fire so long as cold steel will serve."
The two listeners could hear the dull clink and shuffle of the advance. That soon died away. The men who had been left behind began a low, intermittent grumbling over their own hard lot; they did not believe for a moment that their comrades would share the loot fairly with them. Hobson was a coward at heart, said one, or why, otherwise, would they be wasting their time there? They were all smoking by then.
"The whole thing's a cinch," declared the same speaker more loudly. "I'll swear there isn't an Arab outside the ring-fence we've drawn round 'em, and—I'm going on along inside, to get what I want for myself.I'mnot afraid of Mr. Blasted Hobson!"
He came out into the open and stood for a moment or two listening intently, within a few feet of where Sallie and Reuben Yoxall were crouching, their backs toward him. But the ceaseless crash and rumble of the breakers was all there was to be heard.
He turned back, and tramped off into the gorge, with two of the others for company. But three remained.
Sallie felt Reuben Yoxall tug at her sleeve and began to move softly away after him. From somewhere in the distance a shot suddenly rang out. More followed, in quick succession. The irregular crackle of independent rifle-fire soon made it clear that the concentric attack on the camp had begun. The three men in the mouth of the gorge were shouting excitedly to each other.
"We must get away back on board—at once," Yoxall whispered peremptorily. "We can't search the whole Sahara, blind, for a man you wouldn't even know if you saw him. You've done all you can, Sallie. You've kept your promise. Come away, now."
She suppressed a hopeless sob with an effort. It seemed so inexpressibly hard that they should have gained nothing at all by the grave risk they were still running. But hope had failed her, too.
"We'll wait by the boat—just for a little, Rube," she begged none the less. "It may be that—"
"Come on, then," he urged again. "Let's get to the boat,—and, if you'll stay by it, I'll scout round a bit before we put off again."
"More this way," she directed him, as he moved on, impatient to get her back into at least comparative safety. And, under her guidance, they soon reached the rough, trodden path that led toward the lagoon where the boats were lying.
A hundred yards further on, he stopped her abruptly, and dropped to the ground, to set an anxious ear to it. He was up again in a second or two.
"There's a whole army coming this way," he declared in a tone of stricken dismay, "and horses with them too!
"We must make for the soft sand and lie down and burrow as deep as we can."
He turned toward the sea, one arm about her, and almost carried her across the deep, undulating drifts that clutched at her ankles like a dry quicksand. His own strength soon failed against them. He stumbled and fell on his face at the brink of a slope, and slipped on into its hollow and lay there, quite still. But he had let go his hold of her, so that she had not lost her feet: and she was soon cowering beside him, face downward also. They had both heard the nearness of those other feet—very many of them—which had seemingly crossed from the pathway to intercept them.
A hoarse murmur was audible behind them. Some one had ordered a halt. They could hear the heavy breathing of men and the restless movements of horses hock-deep in the drift. They could almost see the ghostly shapes of the white-cloaked riders, but only the leader's horse was even very dimly discernible—because it also was white. Its bridle was jingling a little, too, as none of the others' were.
He uttered a short, sharp order, and Sallie set her teeth to choke back the cry of despair which had almost escaped her. For it was the Emir himself into whose hands they seemed fated to fall, and his tone told the temper he was in.
From among his horsemen a number of men on foot seemed to have emerged, and he was speaking to one of them, in English.
"Are you there, my fine doctor?" he asked evilly, and leaned from his saddle as though he could see through the dark.
"I'm here," a level voice replied, and Sallie covered her face with her hands in helpless horror.
"You're here, you say! And here you'll stay, say I—as was promised you," hissed the Emir. "'Tis not right that the likes of you should be still drawing breath—and her-you-know-of already cold. You're quick yet, and she's dead, my fine doctor—but yours is the funeral that comes first. And you're standing over your own grave now—hell's waiting for you beneath your feet. Stand to one side, and let my men dig down to it."
There was more movement about him, and then a quick shovelling of sand.
"If it's all the same to you, I'll tell them to help you in head first," said the Emir venomously. But the man in the scarlet mask answered nothing at all to that.
Sallie had made an effort to rise, but her knees had utterly failed her, and Reuben Yoxall had laid a heavy arm across her shoulders. The ceaseless uproar from within the camp had suddenly increased.
The Emir was standing up in his stirrups to listen. He sank into his saddle again, and issued some further orders, in Arabic. Most of his force on foot in the rear made off at a staggering run. The horses of his body-guard began to paw and curvet to free their feet as the loose reins tightened on their necks.
"I must be going now, my fine doctor," said the Emir most reluctantly, "but I'll leave you company enough for the few minutes you've left, although you're but a dumb dog!
"And you'll maybe think of me when you're swallowing your first mouthful. Till then you can mourn her-you-know-of."
The white horse leaped and plunged as though he had rowelled it cruelly, and then he was gone at a breakneck gallop, the white shadows that were his body-guard hard at his heels, with lances free.
The grave-diggers paused in their digging as he disappeared. A dozen or more tongues broke into eager talking, and a fiendish, squealing laugh out-shrilled them all. Sallie, with her face between her elbows, had thrust a finger into each ear, and her eyes were tightly closed.
She opened them a little, involuntarily, as the heavy arm that had been holding her down was taken away. Reuben Yoxall nudged her, and she looked round, with infinite caution.
A blue-light, like a corpse-candle in the distance, had suddenly flared up on the near ridge above the ravine that led to the camp. And in its ghastly glow an unforgettable picture was vaguely visible for a moment or two.
The last of the Emir's mounted men were streaming after him into the gorge, between whose open jaws lay three prone, trampled bodies, two very still, the other writhing round and round on the axis of a long lance.
The breakers on the beach beyond the intervening sand-waves reared up, and combed, and fell in blue-green foam. Outside them a black sea heaved ceaselessly.
Inland, a segment of the circular rock-rampart which enclosed the camp loomed up above the endless, empty desert, and on its summit showed a number of white-clad, crouching figures with rifles, all firing inward and downward on the pandemonium raging below.
Only a few yards away from where the two helpless onlookers lay the man in the scarlet mask was standing, his hands behind him, between the two big negroes Sallie had seen in the Emir's tent. And, grouped about them, staring at the blue-light with wide eyes, were a dozen or more armed Arabs. Two other negroes, knee-deep in a hole, were leaning on their spades.
Farther off, beside the lagoon where the boats were lying, the third mate and his men were making the best fight they might for their lives against overwhelming odds. More than one of them had already fallen before the blue-light guttered away and that inferno was blotted out.
But the renewed darkness lasted only for a few seconds before the search-light on the bridge of theOlive Branchin the bight answered the signal from the ridge, cutting through the inky night a long, white, fan-like swathe which swept the coast in sections until it finally found its objective and settled there.
The group about the half-dug grave were at first almost paralysed with fear of that phenomenon. The two black eunuchs seized their prisoner and pulled him to the ground, the men of the guard took cover, with rifles ready, the grave-diggers dropped incontinently into the grave and cowered there.
But when, after its first gyrations, it steadied on to the ridge round the camp, leaving them quite unharmed and outside its focus, they fell to talking again, in awed whispers, while they gazed blinkingly at its effect, all but the two who were busy digging again.
Yoxall plucked at Sallie's sleeve. She crept after him, and by very slow degrees they got safely round in rear of the burial-party.
"Wait here," he breathed in her ear, and left her behind a low swell of the sand.
She crawled to its brink. He was wriggling back toward the shapes silhouetted against the dusky light. She clenched both her hands tightly over her lips as he reached the one that was lying motionless, a knee upraised, quite close to the others' heels.
The upraised knee slowly straightened. One of the two negro guards looked round and kicked at their prisoner. The other spoke, and a squealing laugh reached her ears.
Each instant seemed an eternity until she thought she could see Reuben Yoxall turn and begin to worm his way back toward her, with another stealthy shadow following him.
He reached her side.
"Up and run for it now, lass," he panted, and stooped and lifted her to her feet. "They can't hear us from there. For God's sake, don't give way now."
But she was quite limp and strengthless. The strain had been too much for her. He picked her up in his arms and made for their boat at an elephantine trot, the stranger struggling along after him through the sand. She was sobbing brokenly when he set her down beside it.
A piercing scream rang out across the sand from the near distance, above all the other turmoil. But he had already got the boat turned right side up and the man in the mask helped him to set it afloat. He splashed ashore again and carried Sallie out to it, settling her very tenderly in its stern.
"We're all right now," he told her, and she whispered back, "Oh! I'm so ashamed of myself, Rube,—I nearly fainted!"
The other man sat down in the bow and the mate stepped carefully in. A few minutes later they were beyond the bar, safe enough from pursuit.
"I'll take an oar now," the stranger suggested, speaking for the first time, and in a tone which showed how he had suffered. Yoxall passed him one willingly. He had over-taxed his own strength at last. He was almost exhausted before they at length ran alongside theOlive Branch, skirting the arc of the search-light. He could scarcely scramble up the rope he had left hanging from the poop.
But with the other man's help he managed to get the boat aboard and stowed away again. And they returned on deck together.
"What do you think has happened ashore, Rube?" asked Sallie very anxiously as he reappeared from below.
"I wish I knew, lass," he answered, no less concerned. "I'll go and find out what Brasse—"
"I must see Mr. Brasse too," she told him. "He's promised—" She turned to the stranger.
"The stokehold's the only place on board where you will be safe," she said, somewhat uncertainly. "Will you mind very much—"
"I'll shovel coalmostcontentedly," he assured her at once, in a tone that was still very tremulous. "And—how to show my gratitude to both of you, for the chance, I—I can't—"
His voice broke. He could say no more. His silent self-control had been too sorely tried.
"Come on, then," said Reuben Yoxall uncomfortably. And Sallie clutched at the big, stolid Englishman's arm again and clung to it as they went forward, along the dark empty decks.
On the bridge, in the dim, vaporous light at one side of the white hood within which the carbon was burning, they caught sight of the chief engineer, a raggedly disreputable-looking individual, with features haggard, refined to the pitch of foolishness, rendered still more fatuous by the single eye-glass he always affected and which he had worn even while, when he had first joined the ship, he himself had worked in the stokehold as one of the black gang who feed the furnaces. Brasse was one of a number of human enigmas who had followed Captain Dove's flag and fortunes for uncounted years, and Sallie had long ago heard the common report that there was a hangman's rope waiting for him somewhere ashore.
He looked round as she approached, and his perspiring face expressed heartfelt relief.
"Just a moment," he begged, and once more applied an eye to the telescope trained parallel with the light.
"I thought so," he exclaimed, and turned a tap on a tube leading into the hood. In the instant darkness which ensued, the flare of another blue-light on the ridge above the ravine ashore produced a very weird and startling effect.
The engineer turned to Sallie.
"Gad!" said he, hurriedly, "but I'm glad to see you safe back on board. I was afraid that—Did you get your man?"
"Yes, we brought him off. He's here, behind," Sallie answered briefly, since there was so little time to explain anything. "But—what has gone wrong ashore, Mr. Brasse?"
"That second signal should mean that Captain Dove has been quite successful," said Brasse, a bitter note in his voice. "I expect he'll be back on board presently, too. So I'll get away below now and send some of my men on deck to help. I'll have to see your friend fixed up before the boats arrive. Have you explained to him—"
"Yes, he understands," she assured him, and, as the stranger followed the engineer silently from the bridge, she spoke to Yoxall again. He was leaning over the rail behind her, gazing over the side.
"What do you think has really happened, Rube?" she once more asked him. "It didn't look as if our men were winning."
"I wish I knew, lass," he repeated dully. "But—we'll know before very long, and—we can do nothing to help. So you'd better be off aft again, now, and seek some rest. I must see everything shipshape about the decks."
Sallie went slowly back to the poop, but she could not rest amid so many anxieties. It was not very long, however, before the regular plash of oars reached her ears where she was standing within the companion-hatch, under cover from the dew that the awning dripped. And in another minute Captain Dove's harsh voice hailed the ship.
"Show a light at the gangway, quick!" the old man shouted. "Muster all hands at the rails—and don't let a single son-of-a-gun on board you till I give the word."
These peremptory orders were promptly obeyed. Reuben Yoxall himself came running to the break of the poop with a deck-lamp and let the Jacob's-ladder down. But Captain Dove's boat was well ahead of the others, although for all company in it he had only Jasper Slyne and three white-robed Arabs, who, as they ran alongside, shipped their oars smartly to clutch at the ladder, up which Captain Dove scrambled swaying, with only one hand at his service. Slyne followed him, hot, dusty, dishevelled, still bleeding from a deep cut in one cheek, and then the Arabs, the Emir El Farish first, and the last with a turn of the boat's painter about his wrist in seaman-like fashion.
"Shift her forward now," Captain Dove commanded, "and up with the ladder again."
Which also was done, in a hurry, so that when the other boats arrived they had to bring-to under the bare wet side of the steamer wallowing in the swell. Sallie, herself unseen, saw that there were only three or four men in each, and a sudden, sick understanding of Captain Dove's successful expedient for ridding the ship of the rest of the mutineers flashed through her mind. But she would not allow herself to surmise what the Emir's visit might mean.
Captain Dove, safe on board, surveyed for a space, in silence and very much at his leisure, the men in the boats. But not one of them was able or willing to meet his malevolent glance. A more cowed, unhappy, hang-dog lot he had never seen, and he told them so, at some length.
"Get on to your feet, you, Hobson," he snapped, and the second mate stood up in his place, as if with a galvanic effort of will. Captain Dove regarded him fixedly for some moments.
"You're the worst that's left," he said then, in a steely voice, "and—I don't quite know what to do with you. I've asked Far—the Emir here if he'll have you as a gift, along with the others I left ashore, but he won't. And I don't want you on theOlive Branch; there's no room on board for a man like you—you might stir up another mutiny! Seems to me the very best thing you can do for yourself now is to jump right overboard before I have that boat swung and lay hands on you. For, if you set foot on my ship again, I'll have you hove head-first into one of the furnaces. D'ye hear?
"But take your choice—one way or the other, it's all the same to me.
"The rest of you mutinous swine can come aboard now. You've had your lesson, I think, eh? Then stand by to pick Mr. Hobson up if he follows you, and carry him down to the stokehold.
"Let the ladder over again, there."
The doomed wretch, staring wide-eyed at Captain Dove in the lamplight, seemed to know that no appeal from that most monstrous penalty of his scarcely less monstrous crime would serve any purpose at all, and looked hopelessly about him while the others in the boat clambered, cringing, up the ship's side. He shuddered convulsively as he caught sight of a stealthy black fin in the water, within a few feet of him. His slack, twisted lips were moving like those of a man with paralysis.
"Put—put a bullet through me first," he begged piteously, and turning about, scrambled, groping, into the stern-sheets.
He stood there throughout an eternity of a few seconds, head bent, shoulders heaving, hands hanging limp, and then, "For God's own sake—" he cried, in a dreadful, whimpering voice, that was suddenly stilled by a whip-like explosive crack as he pitched forward, headlong, out of the boat.
Sallie had darted, unnoticed, down the steps from the poop to where Jasper Slyne was standing in the background, nonchalantly looking on.
"Save him, Jasper—for my sake!" she beseeched of him, who alone had any influence with the old man.
"I will—if you'll promise to marry me," he whispered in answer, as if inspired to snatch at even such a precarious chance of placing her under that obligation to him, and, without waiting for any reply, he fired at the black fin beyond the boat, ran to the rail and plunged over the ship's side. Captain Dove swung around, snarling viciously, and struck at him as he passed.
The splash he made frightened the swarming sharks away for a moment or two. He came up close beside Hobson, seized him by the scruff of the neck, and, after a desperate struggle, succeeded in clambering into the boat. A white streak seemed to leap from the water and snapped and missed the second mate's helpless heels by an inch or two as Slyne, with a final, frantic effort, jerked him inboard and fell backward over a thwart.
Captain Dove stood glaring about him, speechless. Sallie had drawn back, unseen, in breathless suspense. But the old man said nothing at all, not even when Slyne stepped, spent and dripping, over the rail, with Hobson close behind crying like a child.
"I've no more time to waste on such tomfoolery," said the Emir then, angrily, "and no great taste for it, either, Captain Dove. So give me the girl now, and I'll be gone."
"Come below, for a minute," returned Captain Dove, in a strangled voice, mastering his pent rage with a very visible effort. "Come below for a minute till I send for her.
"Mr. Yoxall, you'll let Mr. Brasse know that we'll be starting in half an hour. Tell those men off in two watches, and send one lot below. Leave Da Costa in charge of the deck—you'll be rated as second mate, now, Da Costa, d'ye hear?—and turn in, yourself, Mr. Yoxall, till the morning watch."
"Ay, ay, sir," Yoxall responded mechanically, and Captain Dove, as he led the way to his own quarters amidships—he had only been berthed aft, in the poop, while he had been ill and the crew conspiring against him—at length looked round at Slyne.
"Better get into some dry clothes, quick," he said, civilly enough, but in a tone which betrayed his real temper. "I want you to go aft and bring Sallie along."
When Slyne came aft again, a few minutes later, he was once more cool and clean and spruce in white drill, with a plaster over the cut on his face. He was also apparently well pleased with himself.
He found Sallie crouching within the companion-hatch, and she shrank still farther into its shelter as he approached.
"What's the matter?" he asked in surprise, his greedy eyes searching her white face in the misty darkness while she looked up at him in speechless dismay.
"Did you hear what Captain Dove said?" he asked, and laughed exultantly. "You needn't worry about anything of that sort now, my dear. You've got some one to look after you now, and—it's all part of his plan, don't you understand? You must come along with me, but—there's nothing to be afraid of. You're perfectly safe now—with me."
She did not know what to believe, but, since there was no help for it, she followed him, without a word, to the doorway of the mid-ship saloon, within which the Emir and Captain Dove were amicably engaged over a black bottle.
"The real potheen!" El Farish was saying exultantly, a tumbler to his hook-nose. "It's long since I've had the chance of such." He looked round as Slyne stepped in.
"Here, have a sip, Mr. Slyne," he said. "No, out of this glass of mine, if you please, just to show that it isn't hocussed. I've known Captain Brown—Captain Dove, I mean—long enough to be extra careful in his company."
He laughed as Slyne took the tumbler from him and, with a covert nod to Captain Dove, half emptied it at a draught. And, as Slyne smacked his lips, "If it does you so much good, it can't do me any harm," said the Emir jovially. "So—here's to the pair of bright eyes that—Ah! there she is. Come in, acushla, and let's have another look at you."
But Sallie had stopped on the threshold, and stayed there, silent, unable to move. The Emir, staring avidly at her, rose and lifted his glass.
"Here's happy days and no regrets—to the two of us!" he cried, and was draining it off when Captain Dove, at his back, felled him to the floor with a well-aimed blow of the full water-bottle, which was the most convenient weapon at hand.
"Are his two cut-throats out there safe?" the old man hissed from between set teeth, and Sallie, looking round, saw two limp figures huddled with hanging heads in the dark alleyway just beyond the door.
"Safe as houses," Slyne answered evenly, since she stood silent, aghast. "I made sure of them before I went aft. A single drink settled their hash. You must have made the dose in the other bottle pretty strong."
"It's just as well, after all, you see, that we didn't depend on fixing him the same way," said Captain Dove, recovering his self-command and indicating the prone Emir with a contemptuous foot. He seemed to have forgotten for the moment his grudge against Slyne. "I was afraid he'd smell a rat if we tried that old trick on him.
"And now—the sooner he's over the side the better. Don't stand there staring, Sallie! Go and call some of the men in."
The girl turned and went, dazedly, drawing her skirts close as she passed the two huddled figures in the alleyway. Half a dozen of the watch on deck carried the Emir and his ineffectual retinue up the gangway, flung them, like so much rubbish, into the boat out of which the hapless Hobson had fallen, and at once cast it loose.
"They'll probably all wake up before they drift into the surf," said Captain Dove, looking on, with a laugh which made even Slyne glance askance at him. "And, if not—it isn't my fault.
"That fellow thought he could get the better ofme, Slyne—and there's the result!
"Is that you, Mr. Da Costa? Where's Hobson?"
"He's locked himself into his room, sir, and barricaded the door," the new second mate answered swiftly, with a servile smile.
"Humph!" exclaimed Captain Dove. "All right. Weigh anchor at once. Head west for an hour and then due north. You'll be relieved before long. And just bear in mind that we've got to be very careful of coal now; we've no more on board than will take us to Genoa."
Da Costa saluted briskly, and had disappeared before Captain Dove turned and caught sight of Sallie again.
"Get away aft and turn in at once," he called irritably to her. "You'll have to take the bridge by and by, and for a good long spell, too—we've all had a hard time of it ashore while you've been idling on board."
"I could do with a sleep myself!" said Slyne, as he followed the old man toward the mid-ship saloon after Sallie had gone.
"There's no hurry," Captain Dove disagreed. "And—we've Hobson to get rid of first. What the everlasting blazes made you bring him aboard again!"
Slyne darted a grimace of disgust at him.
"An idea of my own," he answered slowly.
"But—you're surely not going to murder him in his bed now!" he added. Case-hardened and unscrupulous though he might be, he had not yet got so far as to contemplate without a seasick qualm the idea of killing any man in cold blood.
He threw himself down on the settee in the malodorous little saloon.
"I'm tired to death of you and your butcher's methods!" said he, regardless of consequences. "Have you no conscience at all?"
Captain Dove, blinking balefully at him from out of weak, red-rimmed eyes, showed all his tobacco-stained fangs: but in an unexpected smile instead of a snarl. The old man was evidently in a much better temper now that he had turned the tables so neatly on nearly all of those who had thought him utterly in their power. It seemed to amuse him to hear Jasper Slyne in the rôle of mentor.
"None at all," he answered amiably. "And—how about you?"
"You can leave me out of your reckoning after this," Slyne declared, the more morose since he knew very well what good grounds the other had for that taunt. "I'm going ashore just as soon as we get to Genoa, and you'll never set eyes on me again. I know when I've had enough—and I've had enough now."
"Not you," Captain Dove contradicted him blandly. "Say when." He had whisked a bottle of champagne out from a locker under the settee, knocked its wired head neatly off on the table-edge, and was pouring the creamy wine out into a glass, with hospitable but steady hand. When the glass was full he stopped, but not till then, since Slyne had said nothing.
He filled another for himself, and drank its contents off in a couple of gulps, produced a box of cigars, and lighted one clumsily. Slyne followed his example in both respects, but more deliberately, and the heady liquor was not without its prompt effect on him.
"What I mean, Dove," said he presently in that grandiose, patronising manner which always rubbed Captain Dove the wrong way, "what I mean is that I've had far more than enough of this rough-and-tumble work. It isn't the sort of sport at all that appeals to a gentleman. And, what's more, I haven't made a penny out of it all."
Captain Dove's eyes began to kindle. Slyne had succeeded, as usual, in touching him on the raw.
"No more have I," he asserted with a fierce oath. "I've barely enough left to pay the port-dues in Genoa and take my ship through the canal; you know very well, too, that I won't be safe till I see Suez astern. For a few tons of coal and some temporary repairs I'll have to trust to my wits. I'm worse off now than I was when I picked you up in New York, with your precious scheme for making our fortunes in Central America."
The flagrant injustice of that reproach was so obvious that Slyne kept his self-control. "Whose fault was it that you were so soft with Sallie as to let her spoil all our plans?" he asked equably, and did not wait for an answer. "And you're far better off at the finish than I am," said he. "Your foolishness has cost us both our chance of a big haul—butyou'vestill got her."
"I've still got her," the old man admitted, if grudgingly. "That's true. I've still got her. And she'll have to pay pretty high, perhaps, for all she's cost me of late. You wouldn't believe, Slyne, how well I've always treated that girl. I couldn't have done better by her if she had been my own daughter. And I wouldn't have believed she'd ever go back on me as she's done of late."
"You don't know how to handle her at all," Slyne asserted bluntly. "You're getting into your dotage. She's outgrown you. And what'll happen in the end will be that you'll lose her too. You're far too grasping."
Captain Dove shook his hoary head with a cunning grin. "If I don't know how to handle her, there's nothing you can teach me," he commented. "And yet you'd give your very eye-teeth for her!"
"It would be the best bit of business you've done for long," Slyne affirmed. "She's cost you far more already than you'll ever make again, and me, too, for that matter. Look what a hoodoo she's been to us all this trip. We might both have been millionaires at this minute but for her interfering with—"
"Avast there, now!" the old man growled savagely. "Don't keep harping on that string, curse you! I know when I've had enough, too. So just keep your head shut about it. And bear in mind, Slyne, that what I say goes, on theOlive Branch, or—it'll maybe be 'Hobson's choice' for you too before we make Genoa."
Slyne gave him back glance for virulent glance, but kept silence, and showed his wisdom thereby. For Captain Dove, in that frame of mind, might very easily have been moved to some insane act of violence. The old man had never before gone so far as actually to threaten his casual accomplice. And even Slyne, who did not fear death itself, did not desire to die in a more unpleasant manner than need be. He sat quiet, searching his nimble brain for some more soothing speech.
"What makes me so hot," he explained, relaxing his scowl as he held out his empty glass, "is that I haven't the money you want for her. You've no idea, Dove, how well I could do with a wife like that. And now—"
"Sallie wouldn't whistle to your teachings now any more than she will to mine—not so well, in fact," Captain Dove declared, accepting the friendly hint, and reached for the bottle. "I wish to blazes that this lame flipper of mine was fit for duty again. See if you can find a fresh bottle below you, Slyne. And, for heaven's sake! talk sense. You haven't the money—and that's the end of the matter."
Slyne, searching under the settee, scowled to himself. He was not for a moment prepared to admit that the matter was at an end, but neither was he inclined to contradict his companion again. It irked him to have to hold his tongue. He approached the subject afresh, from another direction.
"You may not find it so easy now as you think to dispose of her," he adventured. "The world's not so wide as it was, for one thing, and—she's developed a very strong will of her own these past few months."
"Tell me something I don't know," begged Captain Dove. "The world's become far too small to suit me—or you either, Slyne—but I know one or two quiet corners yet where the black flag's better known than the British, if that's what you're hinting at.
"Did you ever hear of the Pirate Isles, for instance? They're not what they used to be, of course, but there's still trade to be done in those waters, in spite of the French. I once met a Chinese mandarin there who offered me a hundred thousand taels for the girl—close on eighty-five thousand dollars. I'm going East again now, and I know where to lay my hands on him when I want to.
"A year ago I could have got rid of her to a son-of-a-gun from Shiraz who tried to do me down over a deal in rifles for Afghanistan, but I wouldn't let her go, to a scoundrel like that.
"The Rajah of—But, pshaw! I've had a round dozen of such offers for her, first and last, all good as government bonds—and a lot more than that like yours, Slyne."
Slyne almost choked over his champagne, but Captain Dove did not seem to notice that.
"And now I'll take the next—of the right sort—that comes along," the old man went on, growing gloomy again. "I've been too particular, I'll admit. I've picked and chosen for her, at my own expense, and always meaning to see her as happily settled as might be. I couldn't have considered her more if she had been my own daughter."
Slyne pricked up his ears. "That's just where the trouble will come in for you," said he. "She's somebody's daughter, and some day she'll find out whose; she isn't by any means so simple as you suppose. Then there will be the devil to pay—out of empty pockets."
He hesitated over an impulse to argue the moral aspect of Captain Dove's expressed intention regarding the helpless girl, but concluded to let that go, since the pecuniary side of it was so much more to the point. "I wonder you don't see," he went on patiently, "how much better it would pay you in the long run to marry her to me, and so be done with all your worries. I'm bound to make money. With her to help me I'd soon be breaking the bank.
"I'm not close-fisted, either; I'm willing to share the profits with you as long as you've any use for them." He held up a protesting hand as Captain Dove would have cut in, no doubt with some caustic sarcasm. "What I'm offering you isn't eighty-five thousand dollars, remember," he finished, "but a free income for life, that'll run into six figures a year—or I'll be vastly surprised at your simple tastes!"
"You'd be more surprised if I said 'done' to any such idiot's bargain," opined Captain Dove, and laughed like an old hyena. "And the sooner you set all such nonsensical projects aside, the better we'll get on together. My pretty white blackbird will never have to fret her heart out in any imitation-gilt cage. And more than that, I heard her tell you not so long ago—I suppose you forgot that the open port below you was just at my ear—that she'd far rather beg in the gutter than marry you!"
Slyne flushed darkly under his tan and darted an ugly glance at his grinning tormentor. He had always plumed himself on his way with women, and Captain Dove's chance shaft had sorely wounded his very sensitive self-esteem. But he still controlled his own barbed tongue and said nothing of the new card he had up his sleeve.
"So be it, then," he agreed, with a somewhat difficult smile. "I can't force you" ("you old fool!" he added mentally) "to take the chance of a lifetime when it's offered you. And, of course, what you've told me now makes all the difference. You've often given me to understand that Sallie's a somebody by rights. Now you say she's only a slave!"
Captain Dove cogitated deeply, and then drank again. TheOlive Branchwas moving smoothly along her course, leaving a heavy load of trouble always a little further astern. A pleasant sense of security and comfort had replaced the agonizing mental strain of the past few days. The wine he had been imbibing was buoying him up, and he was inclined to be garrulous.
"I've often told you she ought to be at least a lady of title in her own right," he remarked at length, "she's so damned high and mighty with me at times. But—who she really is—I've never told you that, have I, Slyne?"
Slyne shook his head, with assumed unconcern.
"I've never told you that—because I don't know," the old man chuckled explosively.
"I don't suppose it's ever struck you that it might pay you to find out?" Slyne inquired with sardonic gravity, and Captain Dove began to show signs of becoming restless again.
"How the Seven Stars can I find out!" he demanded indignantly. "The trader I bought her from, along with a shipload of niggers for the Sultan of El Merayeh, when she was very little more than knee-high to me—and a pretty stiff price I paid for her, too, let me tell you!—had brought her from the other side of the Back o' Beyond that lies three months away behind the mountains of God-knows-Where. So much I found out from him one way and another, although he could speak no language that I'd ever heard before. And no one will ever be able to find out more. She's my property, by right of purchase. It wouldn't pay even her own father, whoever he is, to try to take her away from me."
"But where was it you ran across her?" asked Slyne, with somewhat too much eagerness. "Oh, all right. You needn't tell me any more than you want to. I'm not in the least inquisitive."
He lighted another cigar, and lay back in his seat as if he took no further interest in that strange story. But in his fertile brain he was seeking some way to turn it to his own advantage. And the obstacles before him merely made him the more determined. For the needy adventurer's restless mind was inflamed by dreams of the future he might achieve with a wife such as Sallie to help him, by the delusion that, once she was legally his, he would succeed in bending or breaking her will to his every wish.
In the smoke that hung about the skylight of the squalid, grubby little saloon, with its two evil-smelling, untended kerosene lamps overwhelming even the odour of two rank cigars, he saw golden, diamond-set visions of such a career as could only end at the very crest of that dazzling society amid which crowns nod in friendly fashion to coronets, which will, on occasion, open its doors as if hospitably to a man with money and brains and a tempting wife. Slyne had more than once in his palmier days strayed boldly over all boundaries into the outskirts of quite august circles, and felt assured that he was fitted to shine among even the most select.
While as for Sallie—he could imagine her at his side, tall and slender, in the very latest mode, but scarcely more than young girl yet, as lissom and shapely as any sculptor's divinest dream of Aphrodite, with her pure, proud, sensitive features faintly flushed under the scrutiny of the multitude to the complexion of a wild-rose at its prime; with her curved, crimson lips, drooped a little as though in appeal against the envious stare of the other women, questioning eyebrows, eyes with the wild wine of youth abrim behind their long, shadowy lashes, alive with strange, lambent lights, like twin rainbows born between sunshine and shower; and, over all, a glory of red-gold hair luridly aglow in the gleam of innumerable electroliers.
His own eyes hardened and narrowed again. A cock-roach crawling along a beam had brought him back to crude matters of fact.
"Does she know—what you've told me?" he tried afresh, with unconquerable persistence.
Captain Dove shook his head abstractedly, and then sat up with a scowl, realising too late that he had admitted more than was maybe wise.
"It doesn't make any difference, of course," said Slyne, to appease him, "since there's so little to know: and she doesn't seem much interested, does she? The upshot is that she's your property; there isn't a court in the world that could say otherwise. And no other claimant could prove his case.
"If you'll take a tip from me, though, you'll see that she and Yoxall don't give you the slip together some fine—" He halted, tongue-tied under the old man's murderous glance.
"You can count him out," Captain Dove asserted, with a cold assurance which very much discomposed his more imaginative companion. "Is that bottle empty too? Then I'll just see to him now, before I turn in. I'm much obliged to you for reminding me."
He rose, still scowling, and set his lips to one of several speaking-tubes let into the bulkhead behind him. "Is that Mr. Brasse?" he demanded. "I want one of those boxes of cigars you have in the engine-room." He set one ear to the tube, nodded, and sat down again.
"You're not going to—do anything rash?" Slyne asked, uncomfortably.
"I'm not going to do anything that would upset an infant in arms—for more than a minute," returned Captain Dove in his mildest tone, and Slyne sprang to his feet with a startled oath as a hatch in the floor beyond the table at which they were sitting suddenly lifted, and in the opening appeared the bald head and stoop shoulders of the sullen chief engineer.
"It's all right. You needn't be nervous," said Captain Dove with a nasty grin. "There are lots of other funny little contrivances you know nothing about on this ship." And Slyne, looking angrily sheepish, returned to its pocket in his white coat something he had pulled out in a hurry, while his tormentor stooped and took gingerly from the engineer the innocent looking cigar box which that individual was holding out to him.
The hatch descended again, noiselessly, and they were once more alone.
"I don't like that infernal fellow," Slyne declared in a sulky voice, "and he doesn't like me—or you either, for that matter. If I were you I wouldn't turn my back on him when there's a hammer within his reach."
"Don't you worry about me," Captain Dove advised in return, and, holding the box to his ear, shook it slightly. "My head's quite as thick as your own—if it comes to hammer-work," he added, in a provoking tone. But that shot missed its mark. Slyne was very much more interested in the cigar box.
The old man set that down on the table, and, stooping, pulled off his shoes. "I don't want Da Costa to notice us," he explained, and Slyne, inspired by a fearful curiosity, followed his example.
Box in hand, but at arm's length, Captain Dove left the saloon, tiptoed laboriously up the steep stair which led, by way of the quarter-deck, to the chart-house behind the bridge, and, stepping out on to the deck with extreme precaution, passed aft into the darkness.
The night was no less obscure now that dawn was near, but he could have found his way about the ship blind, and Slyne crept closely after him, not knowing what to expect, since Reuben Yoxall lay safely locked in one of the rooms below.
Captain Dove stopped behind the canvas shaft of one of the wind-sails which had been spread to catch the scant breeze and relieve a little the atmosphere of the mid-ship cabins. Its base was made fast about the hood of an ordinary deck ventilator.
"Cast it loose for a minute and listen," he whispered to his companion, and Slyne obeyed.
He listened there for a time, and then turned to whisper excitedly to Captain Dove.
"There's something wrong with him," he said. "He's raving. He's down with fever, as sure's I live."
"Let me hear," the old man commanded, and was very soon satisfied.
"Hell!" he ejaculated. "Now, isn't that the limit! There's surely some hoodoo on board this ship.
"Tie it up again, Slyne. We needn't waste powder and shot onhim. He's booked out, express, on a free pass—and a damned good riddance, too!"
Slyne was not slow in re-fastening the canvas to the ventilator again. But even then Captain Dove was not done with him.
"Hobson's in the next cabin," the old man remarked, "and we may as well give him his ticket now as later on. We can't afford to let him bolt ashore whenever we make port—and blow the gaff on us both, Slyne!"
Slyne hung back, his gorge up again.
"What are you going to do?" he demanded.
"You do your part and I'll do mine," snapped Captain Dove. And Slyne cast loose the second wind-chute.
Into the wide, rusted mouth of the ventilator Captain Dove cautiously thrust one end of the flat cigar box and pushed that well down its open throat. A muffled click was no more than audible but, none the less, caused Slyne to start apprehensively. And then the old man withdrew the box, tossed it over the ship's side, and, with a hurried whisper to Slyne to make the canvas fast again, scuttled off back to the saloon.
Slyne was not slow in following him, but stubbed his toes hurtfully on his way to the stair and could scarcely repress the curse that rose to his lips. Just then, however, he caught sight of a shadow at the near end of the bridge above, which, he knew, was Da Costa, on watch, and he did not care to be detected in any such dangerous and undignified predicament. When he limped into the saloon below he found Captain Dove seated there, once more sucking at a cigar, head cocked on one side as if listening for something.
"Was it an explosive?" demanded Slyne, almost boiling over at the idea that he had unwittingly been risking his life as a cat's-paw.
"What the blazes are you talking about?" Captain Dove counter-questioned acidly. "And where have you been, eh? I thought you said you were going to bed."
He stared unwinkingly into the other's angry, suspicious eyes. "What's it like on deck?" he inquired. "Any sign of wind yet?"
"You ought to know, you've just been on deck," snapped Slyne.
"On deck!" exclaimed Captain Dove in surprise. "Not me. I've been sitting smoking here since you left the saloon."
Slyne, busy replacing his shoes, thought that over, and sat up again with a sneering laugh.
"Don't forget, Dove," said he, "that, if you ever go back on me at a pinch, that will be the worst day's work you've ever done for yourself. I'm the one who's been sitting here while you've been on deck—and I don't know yet what you went for."
"You'll hear presently," the other informed him, quite unmoved by his threat. "And don'tyouforget, Slyne, that, if you ever go back on me at a pinch, I've another—box of cigars that I'm keeping for your benefit; I don't think Brasse will fail to look very carefully after it, either."
Slyne blanched a little, in spite of himself, and at that moment a stifled shout came from behind some closed door at the end of the alleyway outside the airless saloon. He moved, as if to rise, but sat still, rigid, his eyes dilated, as a blood-curdling, long-drawn cry reached his ears dully from the distance, and finally died to silence in a quavering agony.
Even Captain Dove was uncomfortably affected by it.
A shrill whistle made them both jump as the sight of a policeman just then might have done. It was the old man who first recovered his nerve.
"That's Da Costa, curse him!" he muttered, and darted a glance of contempt at Slyne as he crossed to the bridge speaking-tube.
"How the devil do I know!" he roared into that, after listening to what his new second mate had to say. "Yes, I heard it. You'd better send down and find out what it was."
He set the whistle into the tube again and turned to Slyne.
"Pull yourself together, you fool!" he said savagely. "This isn't the time to show the white feather. I wouldn't trust—" He stopped abruptly, hearing the sound of heavy feet in the passage as some of the watch on deck came tramping in, and Slyne, who had also heard that, pulled out his handkerchief to hide his tell-tale face.
The footsteps did not stop at the saloon door, however, but went on to the end of the alleyway. And, when Captain Dove at length looked out, one of the men there was still knocking violently at the door of Hobson's room. But he could obtain no answer.
"Better get a hatchet and handspikes, Cassidy," said Captain Dove, "and break the door in. Something must have gone wrong inside."
The panelling soon began to splinter under these drastic measures. A crash told that it had succumbed, and then the two listeners heard the key being turned in the lock.
They strained their ears to catch what the men were muttering to each other. One jumped clumsily back into the passage with a hoarse bark of alarm, and, over the shuffling of feet which ensued, could be heard the soft thud of quick, desperate blows on some substance which muffled them, until one fell on woodwork again and a murmur of eager congratulations succeeded it.
The man Cassidy came along to the saloon door, out of breath but exultant. "Mr. Hobson's stone-dead, sir," said he, extending his hatchet, on whose flat blade lay, black and limp, a long thin snake that looked like a slimy shoe-string. "Mr. Hobson's stone-dead—and that's what killed him. It all but got me too, while I was turning over the blankets."
"Bring it nearer the light," Captain Dove directed, and then bent over it, frowning, while Slyne, at his shoulder, stared at it as if fascinated.
"Huh!" Captain Dove at length commented. "Your luck was certainly in, Cassidy, when you managed to dodgethat. It must have got on board while we were alongside the wharf at the Rio. But my luck's out, since I've lost another man—and the ship so short-handed too!
"You might see if you can find a bottle of grog for those lads, Mr. Slyne. And—Cassidy. Just rouse the carpenter out and tell him to tie a fire-bar or two to the body and slip it over the side. We can't keep a dead man on board till morning in weather like this."
Cassidy touched his forelock and went off, apparently quite content with the luck which had left him alive to enjoy his share of the bottle Slyne had handed him. Captain Dove shut the door behind him, and looked contemplatively round at Slyne. His own face was grey. The artificial animation derived from the alcohol he had imbibed was dying away. He looked very old and tired.
He slouched across to the speaking-tube and whistled up the engine-room, while Slyne sat watching him with sombre eyes.
"We've got black-water fever on board now, Brasse," he said in a weary voice. "Hobson's dead already, and the mate's down with it, too. I want you to send one of your men up to see after him. I can't spare a single deck-hand. And I must have some one—or Sallie will be wanting to nurse him herself."
He set his ear to the mouthpiece and, after he had waited a while, spoke into it again.
"That's good," he remarked. "Send him up to the mate's room right away. He'll have to stay there, in quarantine. And whatever he does know about doctoring will maybe help him to save his own life!"