“Nothing like the sound of one’s name to wake one, especially in a strange place,” chuckled Leyden, softly. “I saw on the passenger list that his name was Humbert.” He walked to the taffrail and leaned upon it for a moment, watching the glowing disks of phosphorescence whirled to the surface by the screw. They glowed and faded and then glowed again, to merge finally into a broad band of luminous silver that formed the wake.
“They left my specimen cases at Bolivar,” he resumed, talking to the rudder, apparently, “and took us around to Cumana, where they lodged us in the nasty little jail which I will show you to-morrow, if we are permitted to land. After a month of it—fever and starvation and vermin” (he scratched his shoulder with a squirm)—“I itch yet when I think of it—after a month of all this I became ennuyé and decided to leave.” His voice grew ominously hard. “So one evening I took Frederick and we came away. Frederick was at pretty low ebb by that time, and it took about three days’ skillful jockeying to coax his German blood to the top; but eventually I got it there in sufficient volume to make me think that it would remain for an hour or two—and it did!—long enough to enable him to kill one of the devilish nigger guards with his naked hands. I crushed the skull of another with a jagged piece of rock, and then we wandered down the beach, found a rotten old canoe and paddled out to sea.
“The canoe was half waterlogged, and I knew that it would not carry us very far, so I decided to try and get to Margherita and take our chances on the rest. When the day broke I could just distinguish the outlines of the island, with the usual big cloud hanging over it. We paddled all day long, without seeming to get any nearer; then Frederick grew sulky all at once and threw down his paddle with the remark that he was going to die.
“‘You certainly will,’ said I, ‘unless you keep at work.’ I had filled a water-jug that I found in the canoe before we started, but we had nothing to eat since afternoon of the day before, and what we got then was not of a tissue-building character.
“‘I am going to die,’ Frederick repeated—and then, confound him, he lay down in the bottom of the canoe and did die!”
I grunted—for that seemed to me to be an adequate epitaph for such a person as I fancied Frederick to have been.
“I did not discover it at once,” Leyden went on, “but when I did I was rather relieved, as it is harder to share one’s nerve with another man than one’s food. I slid him over the side of the canoe and kept on with my paddling. Really, Doctor, that day is an absolute blank. About sunset I struck some of the outlying boats of the pearl divers and the next thing that I remember is waking up and finding myself lying in a nasty little hut covered with flies. I think that it was the smell of the shell-heaps on the beach that brought me to life again. But it was odd about that man Frederick, was it not?—and rather illustrates my theory, don’t you think?”
“Never mind your theory,” said I. “Tell me the rest of the story.”
“That was rather odd, too.” Leyden permitted himself a few reminiscent puffs. “The chap that rescued me was a French Jew who controlled quite a bit of the pearl-fishing industry on the island. He was clever enough to guess how I came to be floating about in that hollow log, but made no comment at the time. As soon as I was able to get about again, which was in a couple of days, he asked me if I wished to work for him. I declined with thanks, whereupon he said that in that case he felt that duty would compel his handing me over to the authorities. Practically, you see, I was his slave, but there seemed no help for it, so for the time being I took command of one of his larger boats and her crew. He gave me some clothes and my food and that was all.
“In the end I got even. One day, when I had landed my cargo of oysters on the beach and was about to begin opening—for you know the pearl fishers down here open the shells instead of rotting out, as they do in the East—an old native woman who had been squatting near the edge of the pile hobbled over to where I was standing and begged for one of the bivalves to eat. They are not bad, you know. I told her to help herself, expecting, naturally, that she would pick one up at her feet; but instead of that she went around to the other side of the heap and selected one there. This struck me as a bit odd; then, as she hobbled off, it seemed to me that she was in some haste to get away. Acting entirely upon impulse, and with no distinct idea of my motive, I picked up a couple of the oysters and ran after her.