Having taken off the edge of his appetite he leans back against the ragged stump of the mainmast, and for the first time for long, experiences a craving for tobacco. Perhaps the yearning is brought about by feeling the deck of a ship under him, for he has long since learnt to do without it. Looking idly at the tin case the thought comes over him that it may contain some clue with regard to his brother or to his brother’s fate, and acting upon the idea he stows it away carefully, together with the skeleton of the pistol, within the skin pouch which is slung round his neck by way of a pocket. Then a drowsiness comes over him, and he falls asleep.
The sun flames hot above him, but this causes him no inconvenience now. He slumbers on, and a light breeze rises, rippling the oily surface of the sea—blowing off shore. It winnows in a grateful coolness about him, lulling into deeper slumber, and—the derelict drifts on.
The red rim of the sun touches the sea, seeming to meet the molten water as with a hiss, for the slight breeze has died down with evening, and the last light floods redly over the ghastly hulk with its single human occupant—this man with the attire and colour of a savage and the straight refined features of a European. The sudden, twilightless tropical night falls, falls blackly, and the sleeper sleeps on.
Crash! Whirr! Splash! The hulk starts, shivers from stem to stern, and a great wave comes roaring over her, sweeping the poop by several feet. Half stunned by the concussion the sleeper starts up, to be knocked half senseless by violent contact with the stump of the mainmast; yet even then instinct moves him to grip hold of something firm and hang on for all he knows, and well for him that it is so, or he would have been whirled into the sea in a moment by the volume of water sweeping over him. An immense blaze of lights flashes before his dazed gaze, together with a very babel of voices and a wild roaring and a rush of white foam—then another wave rolls over him. Half stunned, half choked, he strives to lift up his voice, but it refuses its office. At last he succeeds in effecting a hoarse attempt at a shout.
But the receding lights away there in the black gloom are receding farther and farther, the receding babel of voices too, and amid these and the roar of steam how shall his hoarse-throated, feeble shout find its way across the intervening waste? It cannot. Instinctively he springs for his canoe, with a wild idea of overtaking his one chance of rescue by sheer strength of arm. But of it there is no sign—except the frayed end of the painter rope by which it had been made fast. Swamped, crushed by the weight of water which had swirled over the hulk, it has gone to the bottom, and with it his slender stock of provisions. And the tiers of lights are now far distant, and he is left here, as one before him was left—alone on this ghastly hulk—left to die, with his one chance of rescue gliding away in demoniacal mockery upon the black midnight sea.
Chapter Thirty Seven.
The Echo of a Prophecy.
“Let me pass. Quick! I want to see the captain.”