"Grimalson, staring--as we all stared--over the blank sea, vomited the natural man within him in some fourteen or fifteen words for which he was never forgiven by any of us.

"'Gone, by Gosh! And that b.l.o.o.d.y old fool was teaching _me_ to handle a boat!'

"All heard it. Not a soul spoke. I glanced at Jarvis in time to catch the twitch of his mouth--one of those twitches I used to study in angry dogs, and snapshot and measure: but he continued to gaze across the waters. After half a minute or so he glanced at me, looked seaward again, and observed quietly, 'It don't seem probable they would run mast-down in the time. And yet I don't know: 'twas blowing powerful fresh just after midnight. Hull-down, a boat might easily be; and supposing sail lowered, what's a boat's mast better to pick up than a needle in a bottle o' hay?--let be they might be dismasted. There was weather enough. And No. 1 carried a bamboo-- which is never to be trusted, if you ask _me_.'

"'Who the devil's asking you?' demanded Grimalson.

"'n.o.body, sir,' the seaman answered, respectfully, but without turning his head. 'Words spoken in a l'il boat like this be for anybody's hearin'; and anybody's heard or no, accordin' as they choose.'

"'Well then,' Grimalson retorted, 'I happen to be boss here aboard, and I don't choose. So drop you that, prompt, and start baling her.'

"'One moment, Mr. Grimalson--' I began. But he took me up quicker than he had taken Jarvis.

"'Dear me, now!' he snarled in a foolish sarcastic way. 'And who may this be that I have the honour of addressing?--Captain Macnaughten's ghost? or his next-of-kin, belike? Or may be his deputy understudy?--with your _One moment, please_? . . . You sit down on that thwart there, and don't you dare open your face again until I give you leave. . . . That was the old fool's way with _me_--hey?

And now you recognise it.'

"'I do,' said I, pulling out my revolver. 'You may quit fumbling in your pocket, for it's wringing wet and these cartridges are dry, as I have a.s.sured myself. . . . _You_ sit down on _that_ thwart, and don't you dare open your face until I give you leave to get up and wash it.

That's _your_ trick of speech, and maybe you recognise it."

"As I covered him, Jarvis touched my elbow. 'I beg your pardon, sir, but you're a gentleman and a pa.s.senger, and Mr. Grimalson's our senior officer, when all's said, _and_ in command. . . . I'm not talkin' about the rights of it nor the wrongs of it,' Jarvis went on, as I still held the revolver levelled:' but 'tis flat mutiny you're committing; and me and my mates'll have to range up on the side of order. Whereby you'll be no match for us. . . . Oh, sir,' he pleaded, 'let up with quarrelling, and let's all die decent, if we must, when the time comes--and with a lady in the boat!'

"'Thank you, Jarvis,' said I; and lowering my revolver drew out the cartridges pretty deliberately. 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Grimalson.

I shall not, on any provocation, interfere with you again. But before you start baling the boat, I'll ask you to note that the third water-breaker is stove, and it was the only full one. Saltish this water may be, but nine-tenths of it is honest rain from heaven.'

"'My G.o.d, sir, and it's truth!' verified one of the seamen who had scrambled forward. The full breaker had jerked loose from its lashings and lay awash under the bowman's thwart: worse--it had loosed the other two, and these, floating light, had washed away overboard and gone out of ken.

"Grimalson stood up, slightly dazed. In the rock of the boat he seemed to be shifting his weight deliberately from foot to foot.

"'Why didn't one of you report?' he shouted, in a fury at which I smiled; it being so senseless and at the same time so cunning, as a ruse to let him arise with dignity from the thwart. 'Why didn't somebody report?' he repeated in an absurd official manner, quite as though he had been a station-master interrogating a group of porters on the whereabouts of a missing parcel.

"'Well, sir,' I answered as politely as possible; 'it was I that first found the casks were loose, and by the accident that the rim of the full one struck me pretty sharply, in the night, between the shoulder-blades. I got it trigged up, as you see, before it ran amuck to do further damage. In securing it I found that it had lost its bung and was almost empty: but that hardly seemed worth mentioning, with such a flood of rainwater washing around. There was nothing to be done at the moment; the breaker in a way was refilling itself, as soon as I had it jammed, by the water washing over it; and, after a bit, judging it full or nearly full, I ripped off a corner of my oily and made a sort of bung, as you see."

"All this had, in fact, cost me some labour, and I related it, no doubt, a bit too complacently. Worse, I rounded it up by saying, 'The captain, sir, was more anxious about the water than anything, as he told me yesterday.'

"At this his temper boiled over--yet not (as I could see) until he had flung a glance at Jarvis and the crew, to make sure they were submissive still to the old habit of discipline. 'Macnaughten was always full of wisdom,' he sneered; '--so full that he's dead of it!

. . . And so you didn't think it worth mentioning?'

"Do you know, Roddy, I didn't think the fool worth any further attention. . . . One can't really hate two men at one time . . . at any rate, _I_ can't. It's too fatiguing. There sat Farrell, three feet away, looking dazed, as he'd looked ever since the _Eurotas_ went under. As for this Grimalson, I didn't reckon him worth powder and shot. I knew that he would bl.u.s.ter before the men, to save his face, and then climb down. To secure the water on board was such an obvious measure that, bl.u.s.ter as he might, he couldn't miss coming to it finally. . . . I heard Jarvis explaining that an empty pork-tub, with a tarpauling inside of it, would hold quite a deal of the rainwater washing above the bottom-boards. I took no more trouble than to turn my back on Grimalson, who was arguing that all this water was mucking the dry provisions.

"'They're pretty well mucked already, sir, by the looks of 'em,'

answered Jarvis: 'all but the canned meats, and few enough they are.

Five cans, as I counted the last stowage.'

"'Oh, very well, then,' came the order which I had known to be inevitable. 'Run a tarpauling inside of that cask--and bale, you, Prout and Martinez!'

"And so, behind my back and almost as I shrugged my shoulders--so, within twenty minutes of the sunrise that told us we were eight human beings isolated from all help but that which we could afford to one another--in a casual, unpremeditated stroke the curse fell on us.

"The seaman Martinez, kneeling in water, was asking, rather helplessly, for someone to pa.s.s him a baler or invent one--our regulation dipper having gone overboard in the gale. It was a silly, useless question: but Grimalson, already rattled, swung round upon a man he knew to be weak. 'd.a.m.n me!' cried he in a gust of rage, 'if I can't teach it to doctors, I'll teach _seamen_ who gives orders here!' and s.n.a.t.c.hing out a marling-spike from a sheath in his belt, hurled it full at the seaman's head.

"The act was brutal enough in itself; for the iron, though a light one, was full heavy enough, flung with that force, to lay a man out.

It did worse: for Martinez, instead of ducking his head, made a spring to his feet, putting out his hands much as if fielding a cricket-ball. The marling-spike, miss-aimed, struck the thwart in front of him, turned point up with the ricochet, and plunged into his thigh. As I splashed forward to his help, blood came creeping, staining the water around my ankles. The steel point had pierced slantwise through his femoral artery.

"Well, I was quick: and Santa was quick, too--tearing in strips the damp pillow-case on which her head rested of nights when it wasn't resting against Farrell's shoulder. (But not _this_ night, I thought as I worked--not this blessed night just pa.s.sed!) With the pillow-case and the very spike that had done the mischief I made a good firm tourniquet and saved Martinez's life for the time.

"But he had lost a lot of blood. All the drinking water awash in the boat was foul with it, and this bloodied flood was running, as the boat rocked, in and out among our small bags of pork and ship-bread.

My job ended, I looked aft. Farrell was leaning over the gunwale in uncontrollable nausea. The face of Prout at the tiller, was dogged but inexpressive. Grimalson stood like a man dazed.

"'Will he live?' he asked, his eyes meeting mine. 'Of course I never intended--'

"'It wasn't a very pretty thing to do, was it?' I answered quietly.

"'Well, this settles it,' said he, staring down at the water.

'We must clean out this filthy mess and overhaul the stores.'

"'And _then_?' I asked.

"'Oh, it'll rain,' said he, affecting confidence. 'It rained for a hundred last night, didn't it? We've run south of the dry lat.i.tudes and soon we'll be getting more rain than we've any use for.

There's the small keg of rum, too. . . . Great thing as we're situated,' the fool continued, 'is to keep everyone in heart.

And anyway I don't stomach water with blood in it--specially Dago blood. . . . Jarvis and Webster, fall to baling: and you, Prout, hand us over the tiller and dig out something for breakfast.'

"I had found a plug of tobacco in my pocket and seated myself to slice it: and as I cut it upon my palm, my eyes fell on Farrell's yet-heaving shoulders. . . . Of a sudden then it came upon me that, even with the luck we'd carried, men can't go through seven days and eight nights in an open boat and emerge quite sane. Macnaughten had put up a gallant, a magnificent pretence. 'The Old Man's Penny Readings,' as Grimalson had dubbed those evenings when the boats had closed up and the crews sang Moody and Sankey or _My Mary_--'The Old Man's Penny Readings, or Pea-nuts on the Pacific'--had been just as grandly simple as anything in the Gospel. No: that's wrong--they had come straight out of the Gospel, a last chapter of it the skipper had found floating and recovered, and would carry up, a proud pa.s.sport to his G.o.d.

"But Macnaughten was gone, and with him the whole lovely illusion.

He had kept us in a nursery, separated from h.e.l.l by a half-inch plank; and here we were all beasts, consigned to ravening and to die of unsatisfied b.e.s.t.i.a.l wants--yes, and commanded by a monkey-man who chattered of keeping everyone in heart! _He!_"

"So there it was. I told you, Roddy, that it all happened like a nightmare--or, if you prefer it, a composite photograph--of any dozen stories you can recall. Here are the facts; and I will try to give them succinctly, as in a police-report.

"We were eight in the boat:"

"Grimalson,--in command.

Davis, Prout--A.B. seamen.

Webster, Martinez--Ordinary seamen.

Farrell, Santa and I--Pa.s.sengers."

"Our victuals were:--4 lb. of pork (about) and 7 lb. of ship-bread, all messed with blood: 3 cans of potted meat, 2 of preserved fruit, one tin of sardines: for liquid, half a gallon of rum and, in the breaker, about 3 pints of water.

"We were, as we calculated, four hundred miles at least from any known land, and we had no chart on board: we might be within a hundred miles of the fringe of traffic.

"The sea was calm: the wind came in intermittent light draughts from the north. The sky was a great burning-gla.s.s, holding no hint of rain."

"Now from the very beginning--from the moment we left the ship--I knew that, if we were to perish of hunger or thirst before sighting help, I should be the last survivor. No; you needn't stare: it's perfectly simple. . . . I doubt if I ever told you that in the old days, when experimenting with the animals, I found that my will--or brain-power, if you prefer the term--worked torpidly for a while after meals, although, as you know, I was never what they call a hearty feeder. So I took to cutting down my rations. Then of course I discovered that this was all right enough up to a point, beyond which the stomach's craving made the brain irritable and impatient.

So for a long time I let it go at that, and ate pretty frugally at fairly long stretches . . . until one day, in some book about Indian fakirs, I picked up a hint that if this interval of exhaustion were pa.s.sed--if I stuck it out--my will might pick up its second wind, so to speak, and work more strongly than ever. I was curious enough, anyway, to give it a trial or two. The results didn't amount to much: but I _did_ discover that I had a rather exceptional capacity for fasting, and promised myself to practise it further, from time to time, as an experiment on my own vile body.

"But now we'll come to something more important. In the matter of thirst I had persevered: being, as you may remember, hot-foot upon rabies just then and the salivary glands. . . . Well, in the matter of thirst, I trained myself to do my three days easy without swallowing a drop. That last night you invited yourself to dinner-- the night I first met Farrell, by the way--you unknowingly ended a four days' experiment. I told Jimmy Collingwood about it, the morning he breakfasted with me. . . ."

["I remember Jimmy's telling me something about it, in the taxi," I put in. "He said you were either the saviour or the curse of society--he wasn't clear which: wouldn't commit himself until he'd read your forthcoming treatise on _Thirst, Its Cause and Cure_.