“It’s a big gamble,” assented Kettle, “and I wish I could say, ‘May the Lord defend the right!’ But I can’t, and you can’t, and, least of all, Shelf can’t. It’s a devil’s job anyway, and he don’t always stand by his men. The only thing is, even Nick can’t diddle my wife and kids out of the insurance I made for them; so, personally speaking, I don’t much care what happens. You go below to your room now, and get a caulk of sleep. You’ll want it. And, first, if you please, I’ll shake hands with you. We’ve never done it before, because a nod’s been enough other times; but this is different. You’re a decentish sort; and I fancy if that woman hadn’t meddled, you wouldn’t have been shipmates here with me to-night.”
They exchanged a quick handgrip, each looking rather ashamed of himself; and then Onslow went down the bridge ladder whistling, and Owen Kettle resettled himself on his camp-stool. When next they met, the tragedy of the Port Edes would have begun, and in it perhaps both would die by any out of ten violent deaths.
CHAPTER XII.
A DERELICTION.
Eight bells—midnight.
The look-out in the crow’s-nest forward chanted his last melancholy “All’s well!” and gave way to the relief from the next watch. He climbed down by the cleats in the iron mast, and went to the starboard door in the forecastle. Other men followed him, jumping like cats along the streaming decks; and others came a little later—dingy fellows with neckclouts like dishcloths, who went in at the port door; these last being the goats of shipboard, the firemen and trimmers, who were divided off from the more high-caste deck-hands by a fore-and-aft bulkhead.
The third mate and the quartermaster, too, from the upper bridge, were replaced by another quartermaster and another mate; and they also went to the places appointed for them, and the snores of their breathing soon rattled against the bunk coamings. Only two men on the Port Edes, who were not on the roster of duty, stood that windy morning’s first watch. Under the lee of the canvas shelter Captain Kettle sat huddled on his camp-stool in a style which no man could distinguish with certainty between wakefulness and sleep; and below in his room, which opened off the main cabin, and was next the treasure-chamber, Patrick Onslow was dabbling in something which the laws of nations would stigmatize as felony, and that of complex degree.
There were two berths in the room—the upper one against the window port, which he slept in, and the lower, which contained two spread-out portmanteaus. Beneath this last were drawers in which the captain’s steward kept table linen, disused corks, the carpet which the chart-house sported in harbor, and other articles of ship’s use. Onslow had two of these drawers out on the floor, and from the recess of their site had drawn two fine green-silk-covered wires.
He disentangled the coils, taking care to avoid a kink, and then unscrewed the porcelain switch which governed the room’s electric lamp. Beneath were certain pieces of metal embedded in vulcanite.
Patrick Onslow gave his arms a preliminary stretch, a bare wire terminus in each hand. His fingers were trembling, as whose would not have been in the same situation?