"Vache!"
They spat the insults of the prison while Perroquet knotted his great fist over the other, who crouched away catlike, his mobile mouth twisted to a snarl. Dubosc stood aside in watchful calculation until against the angry red sunrise in which they floated there flashed the naked red gleam of steel. Then he stepped between.
"Enough. Fenayrou, put up that knife."
"The dog kicked me!"
"You were at fault," said Dubosc sternly. "Perroquet!"
"Are we all to die that he may sleep?" stormed The Parrot.
"The harm is done. Listen now, both of you. Things are bad enough already. We may need all our energies. Look about."
They looked and saw the far, round horizon and the empty desert of the sea and their own long shadows that slipped slowly before them over its smooth, slow heaving, and nothing else. The land had sunk away from them in the night--some one of the chance currents that sweep among the islands had drawn them none could say where or how far. The trap had been sprung. "Good G.o.d, how lonely it is!" breathed Fenayrou in a hush.
No more was said. They dropped their quarrel. Silently they shared their rations as before, made shift to eat something with their few drops of water, and sat down to pit themselves one against another in the vital struggle that each could feel was coming--a sort of tacit test of endurance.
A calm had fallen, as it does between trades in this flawed belt, an absolute calm. The air hung weighted. The sea showed no faintest crinkle, only the maddening, unresting heave and fall in polished undulations on which the lances of the sun broke and drove in under their eyelids as white-hot splinters; a savage sun that kindled upon them with the power of a burning gla.s.s, that sucked the moisture from poor human bits of jelly and sent them crawling to the shelter of their mats and brought them out again, gasping, to shrivel anew. The water, the world of water, seemed sleek and thick as oil. They came to loathe it and the rotting smell of it, and when the doctor made them dip themselves overside they found little comfort. It was warm, sluggish, slimed. But a curious thing resulted....
While they clung along the edge of the raft they all faced inboard, and there sat the black Canaque. He did not join them. He did not glance at them. He sat hunkered on his heels in the way of the native, with arms hugging his knees. He stayed in his place at the stern, motionless under that shattering sun, gazing out into vacancy. Whenever they raised their eyes they saw him. He was the only thing to see.
"Here is one who appears to enjoy himself quite well," remarked Dubosc.
"I was thinking so myself," said Fenayrou.
"The animal!" rumbled Perroquet.
They observed him, and for the first time with direct interest, with thought of him as a fellow being--with the beginning of envy.
"He does not seem to suffer."
"What is going on in his brain? What does he dream of there? One would say he despises us."
"The beast!"
"Perhaps he is waiting for us to die," suggested Fenayrou with a harsh chuckle. "Perhaps he is waiting for the reward. He would not starve on the way home, at least. And he could deliver us--piecemeal."
They studied him.
"How does he do it, doctor? Has he no feeling?"
"I have been wondering," said Dubosc. "It may be that his fibers are tougher--his nerves."
"Yet we have had water and he none."
"But look at his skin, fresh and moist."
"And his belly, fat as a football!"
The Parrot hauled himself aboard.
"Don"t tell me this black beast knows thirst!" he cried with a strange excitement. "Is there any way he could steal our supplies?"
"Certainly not."
"Then, name of a dog, what if he has supplies of his own hidden about?"
The same monstrous notion struck them all, and the others swarmed to help. They knocked the black aside. They searched the platform where he had sat, burrowing among the rushes, seeking some secret cache, another bottle or a gourd. They found nothing.
"We were mistaken," said Dubosc.
But Perroquet had a different expression for disappointment. He turned on the Canaque and caught him by the kinky mop of the hair and proceeded to give him what is known as gruel in the cobalt mines. This was a little specialty of The Parrot"s. He paused only when he himself was breathless and exhausted and threw the limp, unresisting body from him.
"There, lump of dirt! That will teach you. Maybe you"re not so chipper now, my boy--hein? Not quite so satisfied with your luck. Pig! That will make you feel."...
It was a ludicrous, a wanton, a witless thing. But the others said nothing. The learned Dubosc made no protest. Fenayrou had none of his usual jests at the garroter"s stupidity. They looked on as at the satisfaction of a common grudge. The white trampled the black with or without cause, and that was natural. And the black crept away into his place with his hurts and his wrongs and made no sign and struck no blow.
And that was natural too.
The sun declined into a blazing furnace whereof the gates stood wide, and they prayed to hasten it and cursed because it hung enchanted. But when it was gone their blistered bodies still held the heat like things incandescent. The night closed down over them like a purple bowl, glazed and impermeable. They would have divided the watches again, though none of them thought of sleep, but Fenayrou made a discovery.
"Idiots!" he rasped. "Why should we look and look? A whole navy of ships cannot help us now. If we are becalmed, why so are they!"
The Parrot was singularly put out.
"Is this true?" he asked Dubosc.
"Yes, we must hope for a breeze first."
"Then, name of G.o.d, why didn"t you tell us so? Why did you keep on playing out the farce?"
He pondered it for a time. "See here," he said. "You are wise, eh? You are very wise. You know things we do not and you keep them to yourself."
He leaned forward to peer into the doctor"s face. "Very good. But if you think you"re going to use that cursed smartness to get the best of us in any way--see here, my zig, I pull your gullet out like the string of an orange.... Like that. What?"
Fenayrou gave a nervous giggle and Dubosc shrugged, but it was perhaps about this time that he began to regret his intervention in the knife play.
For there was no breeze and there was no ship.
By the third morning each had sunk within himself, away from the rest.
The doctor was lost in a profound depression, Perroquet in dark suspicion, and Fenayrou in bodily suffering, which he supported ill.
Only two effective ties still bound their confederacy. One was the flask which Dubosc had slung at his side by a strip of the wickerwork. Every move he made with it, every drop he poured, was followed by burning eyes. And he knew and he had no advantage of them in knowing that the will to live was working its relentless formula aboard that raft. Under his careful saving there still remained nearly half of their original store.
The other bond, as it had come to be by strange mutation, was the presence of the black Canaque.
There was no forgetting the fourth man now, no overlooking of him. He loomed upon their consciousness, more formidable, more mysterious, more exasperating with every hour. Their own powers were ebbing. The naked savage had yet to give the slightest sign of complaint or weakness.