'What in God's name is it?' exclaimed Pooley, he being the first to speak. 'What? What horrible disease that blinds them to commence with, and then kills--and kills not only negro, but Arab--captured and captor? Who--which--will be the next?'
As he spoke, a thought struck each of the three as they stood there gazing at one another in the swiftly-arrived darkness of the tropical night--a thought to which, however, not one of them gave utterance. Who would be the next? An Arab had died from some strange, unknown disease in the ship wherein these men had been found, and, now, one of them, too--a negro! Had, they reflected, this insidious horror been, therefore, brought into a ship full of white men? Would they also fall victims to that which had killed the others? That was the thought in their minds--in the minds of all of them, though not one gave voice to that thought.
'He must be got away from them--taken out of that cabin,' Pooley said, his speech a little changed now, and more husky and less clear than usual. 'Perhaps the woman, the negress, may be of some avail. I doubt if they will let us remove him without difficulty--though--poor blind things as they are--they could scarcely make any resistance. Go across to the other cabin, Mr. Charke, and fetch her over.'
He had been anticipated in his order, however, by the chief mate ere he spoke, Charke having, through some idea of his own, already crossed the deck to the opposite cabin in which the woman was placed. Therefore, as Pooley looked round to see why the mate did not answer him, he saw in the darkness that he was returning; while he perceived--even in this darkness, which was not quite all darkness yet, and by the light of the foredeck lantern--that Charke looked pale and agitated.
'The woman,' he said, 'is dead, too, I believe. She is lying on the cabin floor motionless--and cold.'
CHAPTER XII
['STRICKEN']
It was from this time that there began to creep over the ship a feeling shared by all, both fore and aft, that the voyage would not end without something untoward happening. What form, however, any misfortune which might come to them would be likely to take, none were bold enough to attempt to prophesy. Yet, all the same, the feeling was there, and, since every man on board the ship was a sailor, while, for the ladies, one was a sailor's wife and the other a sailor's future wife (each of whom was certain to be strongly receptive of the ideas and superstitions of her own particular sailor), it was not very strange that such should be the case. And, there was also in the thoughts of all that idea to which none of the men congregated outside the cabin, when the negro had been found dead, had ventured to give expression--the idea that the unknown, insidious disease--which had struck him and the negress, and also, possibly, the Arab Negoda down--might eventually seize on them. There were, however, at present at least, no symptoms of anything of the kind happening. All on board continued well enough, and, up to the time that the man and woman had both been buried in the sea for more than twenty-four hours, no complaints were heard from any one of feeling at all unwell, while the three remaining blacks seemed no worse than before.
Yet, it was a pity, perhaps, that at this time the ship should still have been forced to remain becalmed and almost motionless; that neither from south nor west any breeze blew--from the north and cast there was scarcely a possibility of wind at this season--and that, except for the strong southern current which carried her along at a considerable though almost imperceptible rate, she hardly stirred at all. A pity, because it gave the sailors too many idle watches wherein to talk and chatter, to spin yarns of old-time horrors which had fallen upon vessels in different parts of the world, and to relate strange visitations which they had either personally suffered under or had 'heerd tell on,' and so forth.
Nor aft, in the saloon, did those who used it fail to discuss the strange circumstance of--not so much the death which had stricken the Africans--as the blindness that had fallen upon them. And here, Stephen Charke, better read perhaps than any of the others owing to his studious nature, was able to discuss the matter more freely than either the captain or those who sat at his table.