But at the time I could do nought but watch the great villain, the creature whom I could not deem aught but mad, or, at least, mad from the drink.
His eyes glistening and rolling like a maniac's, he sat in the middle of the table, gibbering and grimacing to either side of him, as if the companions he had named were there; now shouting out a toast, then banging on the table with both his fists, then seizing a can or mug in each of them; next calling out in a deep voice "huzza, huzza," and then altering it to the shrill one of a woman doing the same thing.
Next, he would seize the scooper of the liquor tub, and, with clumsy bows to the empty chairs or stools, for such indeed they were, would fill the glasses standing on the table in front of those chairs, though they being already full he did but pour liquor upon liquor until the whole table streamed with it. Then, for variety, he would tear with his fingers a piece of Boucan off, and with solemn gravity lay it on some tin plates near him, saying to the vacant space behind the plate:
"Barbara, my sweet, 'tis the choicest piece of the haunch; I beseech of you to taste a little more"; or, "Coleman, my fat buck, take a bit more of your own kind," and so forth. Or he would crumble off a bit of his dirty, frowsy bread, and, with his filthy hands putting of it in his mouth, would say, "The turtles' eggs are at their best now. 'Tis the season. Ha! They are succulent!" Then he would drink a deep draught of the spirits by him, call a toast, and begin his bawlings and clappings again.
To see the ruffian sitting there in the half-dim light--for his lamp was none of the best--grimacing and gibbering to vacancy, and addressing people who existed not, was to me a truly awful, nay, a blood-creeping sight! For now I knew what I had before me. I knew that this pirate, this man, whose hands still reeked with the blood of his comrade--one of those whom he had but recently called on them to drink a toast to--was mad with long-continued drinking and p'raps scarce any food since they left the reef; that, indeed, he had the horrors, called by the learned, the "Delirium."
Still, all was not yet at its worst, as I found out and you shall see.
Meanwhile, amidst his bellowings and howlings, which I need not again write down, since they varied not, I pondered on what I must do. I had the fellow caged now; if he attempted to come out of the hut I was resolved to shoot him down or run him through as I would a mad dog; indeed, any way, I was determined now to be his executioner. He was a pirate, a thief who had caused us of the Furie much trouble and loss of good life--and here I thought of Israel Cromby and my other poor men, all dead!--also he was a secret murderer. He must die by my hand--but it must not be now when he was mad. I was ordained to be his executioner, I felt, but I would not be a secret murderer myself also. No! not unless I was forced to it.
But, still, I decided now to advance in upon him--the position I was in was cramped and painful; the hut would be better than this, with now many night dews arising from the soil and enveloping of me, and--if the worst came to the worst--I would knock him on the head and secure him. Also, I remembered, I had the treasure to secure. So I moved into the path, rounded it, and, pistol in hand, advanced towards the door of the hut, and, standing in it, regarded him fixedly.
At first he saw me not. The light was growing dimmer, so that to me he looked more like the dull, cloudy spectre of a man than a man itself as he sat there--perhaps, too, I, with nought behind me but the dark night, may have looked the same to him. Then, as he still sat talking to an imaginary figure behind him, his conversation running on the drinking and carousing he and his supposed comrade had once evidently had on the coast of Guinea, I said, clearly though low--
"Alderly, you seem gay to-night, and entertain good company."