Майн Рид
The Ocean Waifs: A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea

Chapter Seventy Six.
A double Darkness

The night was a dark one; by a Spanish figure of speech, comparable to a “pot of pitch.” It was scarce further obscured by a thick fog that shortly after came silently over the surface of the ocean, enveloping the great raft along with its ruffian crew.

Through such an atmosphere nothing could be seen, – not even the light, had it continued to burn.

Before the coming on of the fog, they had kept a look-out for the light, – one or other remaining always on the watch. They had done so, with a sort of despairing hope that it might reappear; but, as the surrounding atmosphere became impregnated with the filmy vapour, this dreary vigilance was gradually relaxed, and at length abandoned altogether.

So thick fell the fog during the mid-hours of the night, that nothing could be seen at the distance of over six feet from the eye. Even they who occupied the raft could only distinguish those who were close by their side; and each appeared to the others as if shrouded under a screen of grey gauze.

The darkness did not hinder them from conversing. As nearly all hope of succour from a supposed ship had been extinguished, along with that fanciful light, it was but natural that their thoughts should lapse into some other channel; and equally so, that they should turn back to that from which they had been so unexpectedly diverted.

Hunger, – keen, craving hunger, – easily transported them to the spectacle which the sheen of that false torch had brought to an unsatisfactory termination; and their minds now dwelt on what would have been the different condition of affairs, had they not yielded to the delusion.

Not only had their thoughts reference to this theme, but their speeches; and in the solemn hour of midnight, – in the midst of that gloomy vapour, darkly overshadowing the great deep, – they might have been heard again discussing the awful question, “Who dies next?”

To arrive at a decision was not so difficult as before. The majority of the men had made up their minds as to the course that should be pursued. It was no longer a question of casting lots. That had been done already; and the two who had not yet drawn clear – and between whom the thing still remained undecided – were undoubtedly the individuals to determine the matter.

Indeed, there was no debate. All were unanimous that either Le Gros or O’Gorman should furnish food for their famishing companions, – in other words, that the combat, so unexpectedly postponed, should be again resumed.

There was nothing unfair in this, – except to the Irish man. He had certainly secured his triumph, when interrupted. If another half-second had been allowed him, his antagonist would have lain lifeless at his feet.

Under the judgment of just umpires this circumstance would have weighed in his favour; and, perhaps, exempted him from any further risk; but, tried by the shipwrecked crew of a slaver, – more than a moiety of whom leaned towards his antagonist, – the sentence was different; and the majority of the judges proclaimed that the combat between him and Le Gros should be renewed, and continued to the death.

The renewal of it was not to take place on the moment. Night and darkness both forbade this; but the morning’s earliest light was to witness the resumption of that terrible strife.

Thus resolved, the ex-crew of the Pandora laid themselves down to sleep, – not quite so calmly as they might have done in the forecastle of the slaver; for thirst, hunger, and fears for a hopeless future, – without saying anything of a hard couch, – were not the companions with which to approach the shrine of Somnus. As a counterpoise, they felt lassitude both of mind and body, approaching to prostration.

Some of them slept. Some of them could have slept within the portals of Pluto, with the dog Cerberus yelping in their ears!

A few there were who seemed either unable to take rest or indifferent to it. All night long some one or other – sometimes two at a time – might be seen staggering about the raft, or crawling over its planks, as if unconscious of what they were doing. It seemed a wonder that some of them – semi-somnambulists in a double sense – did not fall overboard into the water. But they did not. Notwithstanding the eccentricity of their movements, they all succeeded in maintaining their position on the raft. To tumble over the edge would have been tantamount to toppling into the jaws of an expectant shark, and getting “scrunched” between no less than six rows of sharp teeth. Perhaps it was an instinct – or some presentiment of this peril – that enabled these wakeful wanderers to preserve their equilibrium.

Chapter Seventy Seven.
A whispered Conspiracy

Although most of the men had surrendered themselves to such slumber as they might obtain, the silence was neither profound nor continuous. At times no sounds were heard save the whisperings of the breeze, as it brushed against the spread canvas, or a slight “swashing” in the water as it was broken by the rough timbers of the craft.

These sounds were intermingled with the loud breathing of some of the sleepers, – an occasional snore, – and now and then a muttered speech the involuntary utterance of someone dreaming a dreadful dream.

At intervals other noises would arise, when one or more of the waking castaways chanced to come together, to hold a short conversation; or when one of them, scarce conscious of what he did, stumbled over the limbs of a prostrate comrade, – perhaps awaking him from a pleasant repose to the consciousness of the painful circumstances under which he had been enjoying it.

Such occurrences usually led to angry altercations, – in which threats and ribald language would for some minutes freely find vent from the lips both of the disturbed and the disturber; and then both would growlingly subside into silence.

At that hour, when the night was at its darkest, and the fog at its thickest, two men might have been seen, – though only by an eye very close to where they were, – in a sitting posture at the bottom of the mast. They were crouching rather than seated; for they were upon their knees, with their bodies bent forward, and one or both of their hands resting upon the planks.

The attitude was plainly not one of repose; and anyone near enough to have observed the two men, or to have heard the whispered conversation that was being carried on between them, would have come to the conclusion that sleep was far from their thoughts.

In that deep darkness, however, no one noticed them; and although several of their companions were lying but a few feet from the bottom of the mast, these were either asleep or too distant to hear the whisperings that passed between the two men kneeling in juxtaposition.

They continued to talk in very low whispers, – each in turn putting his lips close to the ear of the other; and while doing so the subject of their conversation might have been guessed at by their glances, or at least the individual about whom they conversed.

This was a man who was lying stretched along the timbers, not far from the bottom of the mast, and apparently asleep. In fact he must have been asleep, as was testified by the stentorian snores that occasionally escaped from his wide-spread nostrils.

This noisy slumberer was the Irishman, O’Gorman, – one of the parties to that suspended fight, to be resumed by day break in the morning. Whatever evil deeds this man may have done during his life, – and he had performed not a few, for we have styled him only the least guilty of that guilty crew, – he was certainly no coward. Thus to sleep, with such a prospect on awaking, at least proved him recklessly indifferent to death.

The two men by the mast, – whose eyes were evidently upon him, – had no very clear view of him where he lay. Through the white mist they could see only something like the shape of a human being recumbent along the planks; and of that only the legs and lower half of the body. Even had it been daylight they could not, from their position, have seen his head and shoulders; for both would have been concealed by the empty rum-cask, already mentioned, which stood upon its end exactly by the spot where O’Gorman had rested his head.

The Irishman, above all others, had taken a delight in the contents of that cask, – so long as a drop was left; and now that it was all gone, perhaps the smell of the alcohol had influenced him in choosing his place of repose.

Whether or not, he was now sleeping on a spot which was to prove the last resting-place of his life. Cruel destiny had decreed that from that slumber he was never more to awaken!

This destiny was now being shaped out for him; and by the two individuals who were regarding him from the bottom of the mast.

“He’s sound asleep,” whispered one of them to the other. “You hear that snore? Parbleu! only a hog could counterfeit that.”

“Sound as a top!” asserted the other.

“C’est bon!” whispered the first speaker, with a significant shrug of the shoulders. “If we manage matters smartly, he need never wake again. What say you, comrade?”

“I agree to anything you may propose,” assented the other. “What is it?”

“There need be no noise about it. A single blow will be sufficient, – if given in the right place. With the blade of a knife through his heart, he’ll not make three kicks. He’ll never know it till he’s in the next world. Peste! I could almost envy him such an easy way of getting out of this!”

“You think it might be done without making a noise?”

“Easy as falling overboard. One could hold something over his mouth, to keep his tongue quiet; while the other – You know what I mean?”

The horrid act to be performed by the other was left unspoken, – even in those confidential whisperings.

“But,” replied the confederate, objectingly, “suppose the thing done, – how about matters in the morning? They’d know who did it. Leastwise, their suspicions would fall upon us, – upon you to a certainty, after what’s happened. You haven’t thought of that?”

“Haven’t I? But I have, mon ami!”

“Well; and what?”

“First place. They’re not in the mind to be particular, – none of them, – so long as they get something to eat. Secondly; if they should kick up a row, our party is the strongest; and I don’t care what comes of it. We may as well all die at once, as die by bits.”

“That’s true enough.”

“But there’s no fear of any trouble from the others. I’ve got an idea that’ll prevent that. To save appearances, he can commit suicide.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bah! camarade! how dull you are. The fog has got into your skull. Don’t you know the Irlandais has got a knife, and a sharp one. Peste! I know it. Well, – perhaps it can be stolen from him. If so, it can also be found sticking in the wound that will deprive him of life. Now do you comprehend me?”

“I do, – I do!”

“First, to steal the knife. Go you: I daren’t: it would look suspicious for me to be seen near him, – that is, if he should wake up. You may stray over that way, as if you were after nothing particular. It’ll do no harm to try.”

“I’ll see if I can hook it then,” responded the other. “What if I try now?”

“The sooner the better. With the knife in our possession, we’ll know better how to act. Get it, if you can.”

The last speaker remained in his place. The other, rising into an erect attitude, stepped apart from his fellow-conspirator, and moved away from the mast, – going apparently without any design. This, however, led him towards the empty rum-cask, – alongside of which the Irishman lay asleep, utterly unconscious of his approach.

Chapter Seventy Eight.
A foul Deed done in a Fog

It is scarce necessary to tell who were the two men who had been thus plotting in whispers. The first speaker was, of course, the Frenchman, Le Gros, – the other being the confederate who had assisted him in the performance of his unfair trick in the lot-casting.

Their demoniac design is already known from their conversation, – nothing more nor less than to murder O’Gorman in his sleep!

The former had two motives prompting him to this horrid crime, – either sufficiently strong to sway such a nature as his to its execution. He had all along felt hostility to the Irishman, – which the events of that day had rendered both deep and deadly. He was wicked enough to have killed his antagonist for that alone. But there was the other motive, more powerful and far more rational to influence him to the act. As above stated, it had been finally arranged that the suspended fight was to be finished by the earliest light of the morning. Le Gros knew that the next scene in that drama of death was to be the last; and, judging from his experience of the one already played, he felt keenly apprehensive as to the result. He had been fully aware, before the curtain fell upon the first act, that his life could then have been taken; and, conscious of a certain inferiority to his antagonist, he now felt cowed, and dreaded the final encounter.

To avoid it, he was willing to do anything, however mean or wicked, – ready to commit even the crime of murder!

He knew that if he should succeed in destroying his adversary, – so long as the act was not witnessed by their associates, – so long as there should be only circumstantial evidence against him, – he would not have much to fear from such judges as they. It was simply a question as to whether the deed could be done silently and in the darkness; and that question was soon to receive an answer.

The trick of killing the unfortunate man with his own knife, – and making it appear that he had committed self-destruction, – would have been too shallow to have been successful under any other circumstances; but Le Gros felt confident that there would be no very strict investigation; and that the inquest likely to be held on the murdered man would be a very informal affair.

In any case, the risk to him would be less than that he might expect on the consummation of the combat, – the finale of which would in all probability, be the losing of his life.

He was no longer undecided about doing the foul deed. He had quite determined upon it; and the attempt now being made by his confederate to steal the knife was the first stop towards its perpetration.

The theft was too successfully accomplished. The wretch on getting up to the rum-cask, was seen to sit down silently by its side; and, after a few moments passed in this position he again rose erect, and moved back towards the mast. Dark as was the night, Le Gros could perceive something glittering in the hand of his accomplice, which he knew must be the coveted weapon.

It was so. The sleeper had been surreptitiously disarmed.

For a moment the two men might have been seen standing in juxtaposition; and while thus together the knife was furtively transferred from the hand of the accomplice into that of the true assassin.

Then both, assuming a careless attitude, for a while remained near the mast, apparently engaged in some ordinary conversation. An occasional shifting of their position, however, took place, – though so slight that, even under a good light, it would scarce have been observed. A series of these movements, made at short intervals, ended in bringing the conspirators close up to the empty hogshead; and then one of them sat down by it. The other, going round it, after a short lapse of time, imitated the example of his companion by seating himself on the opposite side.

Thus far there was nothing in the behaviour of the two men to have attracted the attention of their associates on the raft, – even had the latter been awake. Even so, the obscurity that surrounded their movements would have hindered them from being very clearly comprehended.

There was no eye watching the assassins, as they sat down by the side of their sleeping victim; none fixed upon them as both simultaneously leant over him with outstretched arms, – one holding what appeared a piece of blanket over his face, as if to stifle his breath, – the other striking down upon his breast with a glittering blade, as if stabbing him to the heart.

The double action occupied scarce a second of time. In the darkness, no one appeared to perceive it, except they were its perpetrators. No one seemed to hear that choking, gurgling cry that accompanied it; or if they did, it was only to shape a half conjecture, that some one of their companions was indulging in a troubled dream!

The assassins, horror-stricken at what they had done, skulked tremblingly back to their former position by the mast.

Their victim, stretched on his back, remained motionless upon the spot where they had visited him; and anyone standing over him, as he lay, might have supposed that he was still slumbering!

Alas! it was the slumber of death!

Chapter Seventy Nine.
Dousing the Glim

We left the crew of the Catamaran in full occupation, – “smoking” shark-flesh on the back of a cachalot whale.

To make sure of a sufficient stock, – enough to last them with light rations for a voyage, if need be, to the other side of the Atlantic, – they had continued at the work all day long, and several hours into the night. They had kept the fire ablaze by pouring fresh spermaceti into the furnace of flesh which they had constructed, or rather excavated, in the back of the leviathan; and so far as that kind of fuel was concerned, they might have gone on roasting shark-steaks for a twelvemonth. But they had proved that the spermaceti would not burn to any purpose without a wick; and as their spare ropes were too precious to be all picked into oakum, they saw the necessity of economising their stock of the latter article. But for this deficiency, they might have permitted the furnace-lamp to burn on during the whole night, or until it should go out by the exhaustion of the wick.

As they were not yet quite satisfied with the supply of broiled shark-meat, they had resolved to take a fresh spell at roasting on the morrow; and in order that the wick should not be idly wasted, they had “doused the glim” before retiring to rest.

They had extinguished the flame in a somewhat original fashion, – by pouring upon it a portion of the liquid spermaceti taken out of the case. The light, after giving a final flash, had gone out, leaving them in utter darkness.

But they had no difficulty in finding their way back to the deck, of their craft, where they designed passing the remainder of the night. During the preceding days they had so often made the passage from Catamaran to cachalot, and vice versa, that they could have gone either up or down blindfolded; and indeed they might as well have been blindfolded on this their last transit for the night, so dense was the darkness that had descended over the dead whale.

After groping their way over the slippery shoulders of the leviathan, and letting themselves down by the rope they had attached to his huge pectoral fin, they made their supper upon a portion of the hot roast they had brought along with them; and, washing it down with a little diluted “canary,” they consigned themselves to rest.

Better satisfied with their prospects than they had been for some time past, they soon fell asleep; and silence reigned around the dark floating mass that included the forms of cachalot and Catamaran.

At that same moment a less tranquil scene was occurring scarce ten miles from the spot; for it is scarce necessary to say that the light seen by the ruffians on the great raft – and which they had fancifully mistaken for a ship’s galley-fire, – was the furnace fed by spermaceti on the back of the whale.

The extinction of the flame had led to a scene which was reaching its maximum of noisy excitement at about the time that the crew of the Catamaran were munching their roast shark-meat and sipping their canary. This scene had continued long after every individual of the latter had sunk into a sweet oblivion of the dangers that surrounded them.

All four slept soundly throughout the remainder of the night. Strange to say, they felt a sort of security, moored alongside that monstrous mass, which they would not have experienced had their frail tiny craft been by itself alone upon the ocean. It was but a fancied security, it is true: still it had the effect of giving satisfaction to the spirit, and through this, producing an artificial incentive to sleep.

It was daylight before any of them awoke, – or it should have been daylight, by the hour: but there was a thick fog around them, – so thick and dark that the carcass of the cachalot was not visible from the deck of the Catamaran, although only a few feet of water lay between them.

Ben Brace was the first to bestir himself. Snowball had never been an early riser; and if permitted by his duties, or the neglect of them either, he would have kept his couch till midday. Ben, however, knew that there was work to be done, and no time to be wasted in idleness. The captain of the Catamaran had given up all hopes of the return of the whaler; and therefore the sooner they could complete their arrangements for cutting adrift from the carcass, and continuing their interrupted course towards the west, the better would be their chance of ultimately reaching land.

Snowball, sans cérémonie, was shaken out of his slumbers; and the process of restoring him to wakefulness also awoke little William and Lilly Lalee, – so that the whole crew were now up and ready for action.

A hasty déjeuner à la matelot served for the morning repast; after which Snowball and the sailor, accompanied by the boy, climbed once more upon the back of the cachalot to resume the operations which had been suspended for the night; while the girl, as usual, remained in charge of the Catamaran.