“See!” he said, and his eyes twinkled
as he stretched out a gaunt arm toward a corner of
the room. “There’s Johnny Carson lying
naked on a bed of blue fire. Ha, ha, ha!
Have you been waiting long for me to come, lad?”
She shut out the hungry, hideous light of his eyes
with the palms of her hands. Now the screaming
on the deck ceased abruptly.
“Beatrice!” he cried with a sudden terror.
“Yes,” answered Kate.
“Ah,” he said, and patted her hands endearingly.
“When the silence came, I feared maybe you were
leaving me. You won’t do that?”
“No. I’ll stay.”
“So! Then I’ll sleep. But waken
me when they begin yelling again. They thought
I’d come down to the same hell I sent them to,
and that they’d watch me burn. But I fooled
’em, Beatrice, by loving you. You’re
the chip of wood that keeps me afloat—afloat—afloat—”
And he drifted into sleep, while she leaned against
the bunk, almost unconscious from fear and exhaustion.
Kamasura, in nowise loath to bring his work to an
end, stood back and laid on the whip with redoubled
vigor. The lash spatted sharply against the raw
and bleeding flesh. The screams sank into moans,
and the moans in turn declined to a mere horrible
gasping of the breath. Even this ceased at length,
and the quivering of the body stopped. Kamasura
leaned over and slipped his hand under the body in
the region of the heart. When he straightened
up again, he made a gesture of finality with his crimsoned
hands. The mate was dead.
They cut his body loose at once and pitched him over
the rail, then turned their attention to Van Roos.
Sam Hall was the inspired man this time, and according
to his directions they lashed the body of the big
mate on the same blood-spotted hatch cover where Borgson
had lain a moment before, but this time the victim
was placed upon his back. Hall himself attended
to the tying of Van Roos’s head, and he performed
his work so ably that the mate could not change his
position in the least particle. He was literally
swathed in ropes; so much so, in fact, that it was
difficult to see how he could be tormented. Sam
Hall, however, insisted that this was what he wanted,
and the crew consented to let him do his work.
“You’ve heard something, an’ you’ve
seen something,” said Hovey at this juncture
to Campbell; “but what you’ve seen and
heard isn’t nothin’ to what’ll happen
to you unless you start handling the engines of the
Heron. Why, Campbell, I’m goin’
to give you to the firemen!”
“Hovey,” answered the engineer calmly,
“the only place I’d run this ship would
be down to hell—your home port. That’s
final!”
The bos’n was white with rage.
“I’d like to tear your heart out an’
feed it to the fish,” he said, stepping close
to Campbell, and then, remembering himself, he moved
back and grinned: “But the men will find
something better to do with you.”
