“Don’t care. You can go to the bottom then. Get off, will you?”
“No, I won’t,” yelled the unfortunate man in the fury of despair. “My life’s as good as other people’s. I’m here first, and here I mean to stick.”
“Oh, do you?” And dragging down the side of the impromptu raft which was nearest him Roden suddenly released it. Up it went with a jerk, flinging its occupant to the other side, where, losing his hold of the ring-bolt, he rolled off into the sea. By the time he could recover himself and think about striking out, the hatch was quite a number of yards away.
“Musgrave, Musgrave!” shrieked the despairing man, “for God’s sake don’t leave me! Let me just rest a hand on the thing to support myself; I won’t try and get on it. I swear I won’t.”
The only answer was a laugh—a blood-curdling laugh, a demoniacal laugh, sounding, as it did, from the very jaws of death upon that dark and horrible waste of waters.
“I wouldn’t believe the oath of such a crawling sneak as you, Lambert, if taken on your deathbed; and that’s about where it is taken now. Remember the valuable discovery you made at Doppersdorp. Well, you thought to ruin me, but you only twisted the rope to hang yourself with, for if your discovery hadn’t driven me from the country I shouldn’t be here to-day to take your last plank from you. Now we are quits; for I tell you, if this thing would carry fifty people, you shouldn’t get upon it.”
While Roden was thus speaking Lambert had been drawing gradually nearer. Now making a sudden last despairing effort, with a sort of spring out of the water, he succeeded in seizing the edge of the hatch, upon which Mona had already been lifted, and was lying unconscious. It began to slant perilously.
“Let go, will you!” spake Roden, between his teeth, in a voice like the growl of a wild beast. “What? You won’t!” And with all his force he struck out, aiming a blow between the other’s eyes. But Lambert saw it coming, and dodged it.
It was a strange and soul-curdling scene, that upon which the ghastly moon looked down, these two men, both within the very portals of death, striving, battling alone in the black oiliness of the midnight sea, fighting for that small slab of wood—fighting, the one for his life, the other for a life that was far more precious to him than his own. And of all the horrific and heart-sickening acts which that pale orb has witnessed, it can seldom have looked upon one more appalling.
Now Lambert made a frantic clutch at his adversary, hoping in his frenzy of despair to drag the latter down with him. But abandoning his hold of the raft for a moment Roden dived, then rising seized Lambert by the neck from behind, battering his head against the hard wood. The unfortunate surgeon, more than half stunned, relaxed his hold, and fell back into the sea.