"I have warned you several times already," he cried, shaking his fist at me, "but you take no notice. You will try to thwart me again, and then nothing can save you. You fool! cannot you see how thin the crust is upon which you stand? Hatch but one more plot, and I will punish you in a fashion of which you do not dream. As with this woman here, I have but to raise my hand, and you are powerless to help yourself. Sight, hearing, power of speech, may be all taken from you in a second, and for as long a time as I please." Then, turning to Valerie, he continued, "To your cabin with you, madam. Let me hear no more of such talk as this, or 'twill be time for me to give you another exhibition of my power."
Valerie departed to her cabin without a word, and Pharos, with another glance at me, entered his, while I remained standing in the centre of the saloon, not knowing what to do nor what to say.
It was not until late that evening that I saw him again, and then I was on deck. The sea was much smoother than in the morning, but the night wind blew cold. I had not left the companion-ladder very long before I was aware of a man coming slowly along the deck towards me, lurching from side to side as he walked. To my astonishment it proved to be the captain, and it was plain that something serious was the matter with him. When he came closer I found that he was talking to himself.
"What is the matter, captain?" I inquired, with a foreboding in my heart. "Are you not feeling well?"
He shook off the hand I had placed upon his arm.
"It is no good, I will not do it!" he cried fiercely. "I have done enough for you already, and you won't get me to do any more."
"Come, come," I said, "you mustn't be wandering about the deck like this! Let me help you to your cabin." So saying, I took him by the arm and was about to lead him along the deck in the direction of his own quarters, when, with a shout of rage, he turned and threw himself upon me. Then began a struggle such as I had never known in my life before. The man was undoubtedly mad, and I soon found that I had to put out all my strength to hold my own against him.
While we were still wrestling, Pharos made his appearance from below. He took in the situation at a glance, and as we swayed towards him threw himself upon the captain, twining his long, thin fingers about the other's throat and clinging to him with the tenacity of a bulldog. The result may be easily foreseen. Overmatched as he was, the wretched man fell like a log upon the deck, and I with him. The force with which his head struck the planks must have stunned him, for he lay, without moving, just where he had fallen. The light of the lamp in the companion fell full upon his face and enabled me to see a large swelling on the right side of the throat, a little below the ear.
"Another victim," said Pharos, and I could have sworn a chuckle escaped him. "You had better leave him to me. There is no hope for him. That swelling is an infallible sign. He is unconscious now; in half an hour he will be dead."
Unhappily his prophecy proved to be correct, for though we bore him to his cabin and did all that was possible, in something under the time Pharos had mentioned death had overtaken him.