The wireless operator advanced a step at a time into
the room, placed the written message on the edge of
the table, and then sprang back as if in mortal fear.
Henshaw, still keeping his glance upon the Scotchman
with a terrible earnestness, picked up the sheet of
paper on which he had been signing his name, and tore
it slowly, methodically, into small strips. As
the last of the small fragments fluttered to the floor,
his hand went out to the message Sloan had brought
and drew it to his side. He waved his arm in
a sweeping gesture that commanded the other two from
his presence, and they slipped from the cabin without
a word.
“She’s dead?” McTee asked softly
when they stood on the promenade outside.
“She is. She must have been dying at about
the time I brought in that other message—the
one you told me to bring.”
They avoided each other’s eyes. Inside
the cabin they heard a faint sound like paper crumpled
up. Then they caught a moan from the room—a
soft sound such as the wind makes when it hums around
the corners of a tall building.
They were silent for a time, listening with painful
intentness. Not another murmur came from the
cabin. Sloan wiped his wet forehead and whispered
shakily: “I wouldn’t mind it so much
if he’d curse and rave. But to sit like
that, not making a sound—it ain’t
natural, Captain McTee.”
“Hush, you fool,” said McTee. “White
Henshaw is alone with his dead. And it’s
me that he blames for it. I brought him the bad
luck.”
Sloan shuddered.
“Then I wouldn’t have your name for ten
thousand dollars, sir.”
“If there’s bad luck,” said McTee
solemnly, for every sailor has some superstitious
belief, “it’s on the entire ship—on
every one of the crew as well as on me. We’ll
have to pay for this—all of us—and
pay high. We’re apt to feel it before
long. And I’ve got to go back to that cabin
after a while!”
He spoke it as another man might say: “And
an hour from now I have to face the firing squad.”
But when he returned to the cabin, he heard no outburst
of reproaches from White Henshaw. The door to
Henshaw’s bedroom was closed, and McTee could
hear the captain stirring about in it, working at some
nameless task over which he hummed continually, now
and then breaking into little snatches of song.
McTee was stupefied. He tried to explain to himself
by imagining that Henshaw was one of those hard-headed
men who live for the present and never waste time
thinking of the past. He had made many plans
for his granddaughter. Now she was dead, and he
dismissed her from his mind.
This explanation might be the truth, but nevertheless
the steady humming wore on McTee’s nerves until
finally he knocked on the door of the inner cabin.
It was dusk by this time, and when Henshaw opened the
door, he was carrying a lantern.
