"There's that quartermaster and my steward, and Jose the n.i.g.g.e.r," said he. "That's quite enough, Mr. Cole, for I ain't above an oar myself; but, by G.o.d, I'm skipper o' this here ship, and I'll skip her as long as I remain aboard!"

I saw his hand go to his belt; I saw the pistols stuck there for mutineers. I looked at Santos. He answered me with his neutral shrug, and, by my soul, he struck a match and lit a cigarette in that hour of life and death! Then last I looked at Ready; and he leant invertebrate over the rail, gasping pitiably from his exertions in regaining the p.o.o.p, a dying man once more. I pointed out his piteous state.

"At least," I whispered, "you won't refuse to take him?"

"Will there be anything to take?" said the captain brutally.

Santos advanced leisurely, and puffed his cigarette over the poor wasted and exhausted frame.

"It is for you to decide, captain," said he cynically; "but this one will make no deeference. Yes, I would take him. It will not be far," he added, in a tone that was not the less detestable for being lowered.

"Take them both!" moaned little Eva, putting in her first and last sweet word.

"Then we all drown, Evasinha," said her stepfather. "It is impossible."

"We're too many for her as it is," said the captain. "So for'ard with ye, Mr. Cole, before it's too late."

But my darling's brave word for me had fired my blood, and I turned with equal resolution on Harris and on the Portuguese. "I will go like a lamb," said I, "if you will first give me five minutes' conversation with Miss Denison. Otherwise I do not go; and as for the gig, you may take me or leave me, as you choose."

"What have you to say to her?" asked Santos, coming up to me, and again lowering his voice.

I lowered mine still more. "That I love her!" I answered in a soft ecstasy. "That she may remember how I loved her, if I die!"

His shoulders shrugged a cynical acquiescence.

"By all mins, senhor; there is no harm in that."

I was at her side before another word could pa.s.s his withered lips.

"Miss Denison, will you grant me five minutes', conversation? It may be the last that we shall ever have together!"

Uncovering her face, she looked at me with a strange terror in her great eyes; then with a questioning light that was yet more strange, for in it there was a wistfulness I could not comprehend. She suffered me to take her hand, however, and to lead her unresisting to the weather rail.

"What is it you have to say?" she asked me in her turn. "What is it that you-think?"

Her voice fell as though she must have the truth.

"That we have all a very good chance," said I heartily.

"Is that all?" cried Eva, and my heart sank at her eager manner.

She seemed at once disappointed and relieved. Could it be possible she dreaded a declaration which she had foreseen all along? My evil first experience rose up to warn me. No, I would not speak now; it was no time. If she loved me, it might make her love me less; better to trust to G.o.d to spare us both.

"Yes, it is all," I said doggedly.

She drew a little nearer, hesitating. It was as though her disappointment had gained on her relief.

"Do you know what I thought you were going to say?"

"No, indeed."

"Dare I tell you?"

"You can trust me."

Her pale lips parted. Her great eyes shone. Another instant, and she had told me that which I would have given all but life itself to know. But in that tick of time a quick step came behind me, and the light went out of the sweet face upturned to mine.

"I cannot! I must not! Here is-that man!"

Senhor Santos was all smiles and rings of pale-blue smoke.

"You will be cut off, friend Cole," said he. "The fire is spreading."

"Let it spread!" I cried, gazing my very soul into the young girl's eyes. "We have not finished our conversation.

"We have!" said she, with sudden decision. "Go-go-for my sake-for your own sake-go at once!"

She gave me her hand. I merely clasped it. And so I left her at the rail-ah, heaven! how often we had argued on that very spot! So I left her, with the greatest effort of all my life (but one); and yet in pa.s.sing, full as my heart was of love and self, I could not but lay a hand on poor Ready's shoulders.

"G.o.d bless you, old boy!" I said to him.

He turned a white face that gave me half an instant's pause.

"It's all over with me this time," he said. "But, I say, I was right about the cargo?"

And I heard a chuckle as I reached the ladder; but Ready was no longer in my mind; even Eva was driven out of it, as I stood aghast on the top-most rung.

CHAPTER III. TO THE WATER'S EDGE

It was not the new panic amidships that froze my marrow; it was not that the pinnace hung perpendicularly by the fore-tackle, and had shot out those who had swarmed aboard her before she was lowered, as a cart shoots a load of bricks. It was bad enough to see the whole boat-load struggling, floundering, sinking in the sea; for selfish eyes (and which of us is all unselfish at such a time?) there was a worse sight yet; for I saw all this across an impa.s.sable gulf of fire.

The quarter-deck had caught: it was in flames to port and starboard of the flaming hatch; only fore and aft of it was the deck sound to the lips of that hideous mouth, with the hundred tongues shooting out and up.

Could I jump it there? I sprang down and looked. It was only a few feet across; but to leap through that living fire was to leap into eternity. I drew back instantly, less because my heart failed me, I may truly say, than because my common sense did not.

Some were watching me, it seemed, across this h.e.l.l. "The bulwarks!" they screamed. "Walk along the bulwarks!" I held up my hand in token that I heard and understood and meant to act. And as I did their bidding I noticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler eyes: the wind was not; we had lost our southeast trades; the doomed ship was rolling in a dead calm.

Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed minutes before I dared to move an inch. Then I tried it on my hands and knees, but the scorched bulwarks burned me to the bone. And then I leapt up, desperate with the pain; and, with my tortured hands spread wide to balance me, I walked those few yards, between rising sea and falling fire, and falling sea and rising fire, as an acrobat walks a rope, and by G.o.d's grace without mishap.

There was no time to think twice about my feat, or, indeed, about anything else that befell upon a night when each moment was more pregnant than the last. And yet I did think that those who had encouraged me to attempt so perilous a trick might have welcomed me alive among them; they were looking at something else already; and this was what it was.

One of the cabin stewards had presented himself on the p.o.o.p; he had a bottle in one hand, a gla.s.s in the other; in the red glare we saw him dancing in front of the captain like an unruly marionette. Harris appeared to threaten him. What he said we could not hear for the deep-drawn blast and the high staccato crackle of the blazing hold. But we saw the staggering steward offering him a drink; saw the gla.s.s flung next instant in the captain's face, the blood running, a pistol drawn, fired without effect, and s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the drunken mutineer. Next instant a smooth black cane was raining blow after blow on the man's head. He dropped; the blows fell thick and heavy as before. He lay wriggling; the Portuguese struck and struck until he lay quite still; then we saw Joaquin Santos kneel, and rub his stick carefully on the still thing's clothes, as a man might wipe his boots.

Curses burst from our throats; yet the fellow deserved to die. Nor, as I say, had we time to waste two thoughts upon any one incident. This last had begun and ended in the same minute; in another we were at the starboard gangway, tumbling helter-skelter aboard the lowered long-boat.