A few minutes later Baptiste followed him there.
"Sorry to disturb you, captain," he said, seeing the expression of annoyance on Carew's face, and also noticing the bottle of laudanum standing on the table; "but now we are off, running merrily before the wind, away from that accursed island. If you please, what is our course—where are we bound for—and have you thought of a plausible explanation of how we picked up this derelict? Rouse yourself, sir. Think, act, and be a man again."
Carew had drunk a quantity of laudanum that morning, and he replied in a dreamy voice, as if he had lost all interest in life, and was heedless of the future—
"Do what you like. I leave it all to you. I am unable to think."
"Sir, this is cowardly of you!" cried Baptiste vehemently. "Everything has gone so well with us thus far, and now you lose heart when an immense fortune is almost in our hands. Remember what we have done for you, and do not risk all our lives by neglecting your duties to us."
"What do I care for your lives?" replied Carew with a bitter laugh, that had an insane ring in it. "What is it to me where we go, even if it be to the bottom? Leave me."
"Good-bye, sir; I will take charge of the vessel until you come to your senses." As he spoke, Baptiste contrived to slip the bottle of laudanum into his pocket unperceived by Carew.
The mate went on deck and threw the bottle into the sea. "That coward will go mad if he drugs himself much longer," he said to himself. "When he got on shore he would ruin us all in some silly fit of garrulous remorse. He would disburden his conscience and hang us in his present temper. He shall have no more laudanum. I must look after him and cure him before we get into port. If I cannot do so, well, then, he must die. A pity that; for he is useful, almost necessary, to us."
Baptiste consulted the chart, and determined to run for the port of Bahia, which is about seven hundred miles to the north-west of Trinidad. Having quickly formed his plans, he carried them out with considerable cleverness.