After midnight the _Sovereign_ had burned clear to the water line from aft to amidships. Even her rails along the waist were burning fiercely with the oil that had been thrown upon them by the explosions of the heated barrels. And as she burned out her oil, she sank lower and lower in the water until she gave forth huge clouds of steam and smoke instead of flaring flames. In the early hours of the morning, we were still within two hundred fathoms of her; and she showed nothing in the gray light save the mainmast and the topgallant forecastle. Her canvas had gone, and the bare black pole of her mast stuck out of the sea, which now flowed deep around the foot of it. Upon the blackened forecastle head, five human forms crouched behind the sheltering bulk of the windla.s.s.
They were silent now and motionless. While I looked, one of them staggered to his feet and stretched out his hands above his head, gazing at the light in the east. It was Andrews. He raised his clenched fists and shook them fiercely at us and at the gray sky above. Then over the calm, silent ocean came the fierce, raving curses of the doomed villain.
A gentle air was stirring the swell in the east, which soon filled our sail. We kept the boat"s head away until she pointed in the direction of the African cape. And so we sailed away, with the echoes of that villain"s voice ringing in our ears, calling forth fierce curses upon the G.o.d he had denied.
I turned away from the horrible spectacle of that grisly hulk with its human burden. As I did so, my eyes met those of Miss Sackett. She lowered hers, took out her handkerchief and, bowing over, buried her face in it, crying as though her heart would break.
XVII
"If you"ll pa.s.s the pannikin, I"ll take a drink, sir," said Jenks, after the sun had risen and warmed the chilly air of the southern ocean.
I tossed the old man-o"-war"s man the measure, and he proceeded to draw a cupful from the water breaker, which was full and lay amidships.
"It"s an uncommon quare taste the stuff has, sure enough," said he, after he had laid aside his quid and drank a mouthful, "Try a bit, Tom," he went on, and pa.s.sed the pannikin to a sailor next him.
"You"re always lookin" fer trouble, old man," said the sailor, draining off the cupful.
"An" bloomin" well ready to get out of it by any way he can," added another. "Fill her up agin an" let me have some. This sun is most hot, in spite of the breeze. Blast me, Jenks, but you"re a suspicious one. It"s a wonder you ever go to sleep."
The young sailor, Tom, put down the cup and watched Jenks draw it full again. Then he grew pale.
"Hold on a bit with that water, you men. There"s something wrong with it," he said. He gulped and placed his hand over his abdomen, while a spasm of pain pa.s.sed over his features.
"My G.o.d!" he muttered, and doubled up. Then he vomited violently and his spasms increased.
I saw Chips turn white under his tan, and Johnson look with staring eyes at the water breaker, as though it were a ghost.
"Knock in the head," I said, "and let"s see what"s inside of it."
Two men held the poor fellow gasping over the rail while his agony grew worse. The rest crowded around aft as much as possible to see what terrible fate was in store for us.
The breaker was upended in a moment. Jenks stove in the head with an oar handle, and we peered inside.
The water was a clear crystal, like that in the _Sovereign"s_ tanks. It was not discolored in the least.
"Pa.s.s the bailer here," I said; "and then turn the barrel so we can get the sunlight into it."
I bailed out a few quarts, looked at it carefully, tasted it slightly, and then put it carefully back again. I noticed a strange acrid taste.
The barrel was turned toward the sun, and its light was allowed to shine straight into its depths. I put my head down close to the surface and peered hard at the bottom. Then I was aware of a whitish powder which showed against the dark wood. Reaching down, some of this was brought up; and then I recognized the same powder Captain Sackett had told me was bichloride of mercury.
By this time Tom was in convulsions. He strained horribly, and we could do nothing to relieve his agony. Brandy was given, but it did no good, and finally he lost consciousness. Miss Sackett nursed him tenderly and did all she could to make him comfortable, but it was no use.
The horror of the thing fairly took my senses for a moment. There we were, miles away from land, without water. The villains had meant us to tell no tales. All adrift in an open boat, with food and water poisoned, we had a small chance indeed of ever telling the story of the _Sovereign"s_ loss. Vessels were not plentiful at the high lat.i.tude we were in; and, as we were out of the trade, it was doubtful if we could even get into the track of the regular Cape route inside a week, to say nothing of being picked up. It seemed as though Andrews" villany would finish us yet.
Far away on the southern horizon, the single mast stuck up above the blue water like a black rod. I stood up and gazed at it. Chips appeared to read my thoughts, for he spoke out:--
""Tis no use now, sir; the tanks would be a couple o" fathoms deep, an"
we couldn"t get at them. She won"t float more"n a day or two, anyhow, wid th" afterdeck an" cargo burnt free. She"ll go under as soon as the oil"s washed out wid a sea, and that"ll be th" last av a bad ship."
I saw that the carpenter was right. There was no water for either Andrews or ourselves, and it would be foolish to go back to force the tank.
"Heave the stuff overboard," I said, and Johnson and Jenks raised the barrel upon the rail. It poured out clear into the blue ocean, and showed no sign of its deadly character.
"Break out that barrel of ship"s bread," said Chips.
It was found to be moistened with water all through, and as even the little poison I had drunk made me horribly nauseated, there was no thought of tasting the stuff. Over the side it went, floating high in the boat"s wake. Then came the beef.
"Hold on with that," said Miss Sackett. "It isn"t likely they"d poison everything. I don"t remember there being over several pounds of that mercury in the medicine chest, and you know it won"t dissolve readily in water. They must have had something to dissolve it in first, and it would have taken too long to fill everything full of the stuff."
"Who cares to taste the beef?" I asked.
"Give me a piece, sir," said Johnson.
He put it in his mouth and chewed slowly upon it at first, as though not quite certain whether to swallow it or not. Finally he mustered courage and made away with a portion of it, waiting some minutes to see if it produced pain. It was apparently all right, and then he swallowed the rest. We concluded to keep the beef and eat it as a last resort.
The breeze freshened in the southeast, and we ran along steadily. If it held, we could make about a hundred miles a day, and raise the African coast within a week. There was a chance, if we could stand the strain.
It was now the sixth day since we had left the _Pirate_, and we figured that she must have rounded the Cape, and would now be standing along up the South Atlantic with the steady southeast trade behind her. Other ships would be in the lat.i.tude of Cape Town, and if we could make the northing, we might raise one and be picked up. I pictured the horrors the poor girl sitting beside me must endure if we were adrift for days in the whale-boat. What she had already gone through was enough to shake the nerves of the strongest woman, but here she sat, quietly looking at the water, her eyes sometimes filled with tears, while not a word of complaint escaped her lips.
Her example nerved me. I had pa.s.sed the order to stop all talking except when necessary, as it would only add to thirst. We ran along in silence.
We had no compa.s.s save the one hanging to my watch-chain, as big as my thumb-nail, but I managed to make a pretty straight course for all that.
The wind freshened and was quite cool. The sunlight, sparkling over the ocean, which now turned dark blue with a speck of white here and there to windward, warmed us enough to keep off actual chill, but the men who had taken off their coats to make a little more of a spread to the fair wind soon requested permission to put them on again. Sitting absolutely quiet as we were, the air was keener than if we were going about the sheltered decks of a ship.
On we went, the swell rolling under us and giving us a twisting motion.
Sometimes we would be in a long hollow where the breeze would fail. Then, as we rose sternwrard, the little sail would fill, and away we would go, racing along the slanting crest of the long sea, the foam rushing from the boat"s sides with a hopeful, hissing sound, until the swell would gain on us and go under, leaving the boat with her bow pointing up the receding slope and her headway almost gone, to drop into the following hollow and repeat the action.
The English sailor who had drank the water was now stone dead. Johnson gave me a look, and I began a conversation with Miss Sackett, endeavoring to engage her attention. A splash from forward made her look, and she saw what had happened. Then she turned and, looking up at me, placed her soft little hand on mine which lay upon the tiller.
"You are very good to me, Mr. Rolling, but I can stand suffering as well as a man," she said. "I thank you just the same." Then her eyes filled and she turned away her face. I found something to fix at the rudder head, and when I was through she was looking over the blue water where the lumpy trade clouds showed above the horizon"s rim.
As the day wore on, the hunger of the men began to show itself. Jenks kept his wrinkled, leather face to the northward, looking steadily for a sail, but the other sailors glanced aft several times, and I noticed the strange glare of the eye which tells of the hungry animal. Some of these men had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. One big, heavy-looking young sailor glanced back several times from the clew of his eye at the girl sitting aft. But I fixed my gaze upon him so steadily that he shifted his seat and looked forward.
Late in the afternoon some of the men insisted on eating the beef, and it was served to them. No ill effects followed, so all hands took their ration. This satisfied them for the time being, but I knew the thirst which must surely follow. I had been adrift in an open boat before in the Pacific. There had been sixteen men at the start, and at the end of four weeks of horror seven had been picked up to tell a tale which would make the blood curdle. The memory of this made me sick with fear and anxiety.
Johnson felt so much better from his meal that he stood in the bow with his little monkey-like figure braced against the mast, his legs on the gunwales. He said jokingly that he"d raise a sail before eight bells in the afternoon. Suddenly he cried out:--
"Sail dead ahead, sir!"
""Tis no jokin" matter," growled Chips, angrily. "Shet yer head, ye monkey, afore I heave ye over th" side."
Johnson turned fiercely upon him.
"Jokin", you lummax! Slant yer eye forrads, an" don"t sit there a-lookin"
at yerself," he snarled.