“You treacherous hound, you’ve poisoned us!” stammered out the mate.
“I swear I haven’t, Mr Brymer, sir. Don’t, sir—that pistol, sir—pray, sir—indeed, indeed, I haven’t!”
Mr Brymer was shaking the pistol about threateningly, as he rocked to and fro over the cook, who as he knelt clasped his hands in agony, and I heard him say something very indistinctly, for he was sobbing about his wife and child.
Then there was a loud bang as the pistol fell, and directly after I saw Mr Brymer glide down as it were on to the deck, and roll over toward where Mr Frewen already lay—though I had not seen him fall—with his arms now folded, and his face upon them as if he were asleep.
And still it didn’t seem to trouble me in the least. Even when Mr Brymer was gesticulating with his pistol, it did not alarm me, for it was all something interesting going on before me just as if it were part of a dream which would all dissolve away directly, and then I should wake up and think of it no more.
I think my eyes must have been closing then, but they opened widely again, and at one glance I saw my companions perfectly motionless from where I sat back against the bulwark, and heard Mr Preddle snoring heavily by my side. For the cook exclaimed passionately—
“I swear, if it was the last word I had to titter, I’ve done nothing! I never drugged nobody’s food!”
“All right, matey,” said the sailor I had seen talking to the steersman; “it warn’t you—it was me.”
“You?” cried the cook. “You’ve poisoned them!”
“Not I, my lad,” said the man, laughing; and every word he uttered rang in my ears as if it was being shouted by some tremendous voice, for my senses were at that moment abnormally clear. “Not I, my lad. I was up yonder, when I saw Brymer and the rest of ’em get together to have what old Frenchy calls a parley, and they hadn’t been there long, leaving me wondering what game was up, and what they were going to do about the lads down below, when I see the sky-light opened a bit. So of course I crep’ along the deck to hear what they’d got to say.”