“Not dead! Oh, my God, not dead!”
CHAPTER XIV.—SHROUDED IN A HAMMOCK.
That was a fearful moment for Don. The quest of the golden pearl, entered upon with all the love of adventure and sanguine hope natural to young hearts, began to wear a serious aspect indeed. Even had Jack been there to share the heartbreak of it, this sudden, numbing blow would still have been terribly hard to bear. But Jack was gone—whither, Heaven alone knew—and the captain was dead.
Ay, the “Providence that sits up aloft” had at last looked out a snug berth for the old sailor, and shipped him for the Eternal Voyage. Kneeling by his side in the solemn twilight, with aching heart Don recalled all his quaint ways and quainter sayings, his large-hearted generosity, his rollicking good-nature, his rough but ever-ready sympathy—and sealed the kindly eyes with such tears as are wrung from us but once or twice in a lifetime, and recalled with sadness often, with shame never.
But for him the captain would never have undertaken this disastrous venture. This was the bitterest, the sorest thought of all.
At last Bosin's low wailing broke in upon his sad reverie. Well-nigh human did the monkey seem, as with tender, lingering touch he caressed his master's face, and sought to rouse him from this strange sleep of which he felt but could not understand the awful meaning. Then, failing to win from the dumb lips the response he craved, he turned his eyes upon his master's friend with a look of pathetic appeal fairly heartbreaking in its mute intensity.
No sooner did he succeed in attracting Don's attention, however, than his manner underwent a complete change. The plaintive wail became a hiss, the puny, lithe hands tore frantically at something that showed like a thin, dark streak about the dead man's neck. What with the waning light and the shock of finding the captain dead, Don had not noticed this streak before. He looked at it closely now, and as he looked a horrified intelligence leapt into his face. The dark streak was a cord: the captain had been strangled!
Oh, the horror of that discovery! Hitherto he had suspected no foul play, no connection of any kind, indeed, between the captain's death and the lascar's escape; for had he not taken the precaution to disarm the native? But now he remembered seeing that cord about the fellow's middle. He had thought it harmless. Harmless! Ah, how different was the mute witness borne by the old sailor's lifeless form! In the lascar's hands the cord had proved an instrument of death as swift and sure as any knife.