Everything was ready for the signal, which was fully due and momentarily expected.
CHAPTER VII.
THE AGONY OF SUSPENSE.
I may now quote the Kantoon’s own words:
“Every moment’s delay added to the anxiety of the commander of the attacking party, because a sneeze from any one of the two hundred men would have exposed our presence,” continued the Kantoon of the Happy Shark, quite interested in his own narrative. As he grew more animated and excited, however, his language became so polyglot that, had I not possessed a wide range of linguistic attainments, I certainly could not have followed him. For ordinary narrative, I found he preferred Portuguese and Spanish; when he attempted bits of pathos, he generally employed a horrible admixture of French and Italian; his descriptions were chiefly in broken English, larded with German adjectives and Russian verbs. A free translation of his narrative ran thus:
“Aboard the Caribas was one man who nearly defeated our expedition. He was the boatswain, a sturdy, rugged fellow, who you doubtless remember; his strength and courage will remain a tradition as long as the present generation of Sargassons lasts.”
“Yes, indeed; I remember the poor fellow,” I added, solemnly.
“As we ascertained, after his capture, the boatswain had been a deep water sailor on the Atlantic nearly all his life, had many times approached our continent and had heard from sailors many tales regarding its mysteries. He had himself seen the Light in the Sky that hovered above the floating sod; but, like every superstitious sailor, he hardly credited in his own mind the stories he repeated and affected to believe. He had been on deck at the time the Sacred Light was flashed. He had seen it, had studied it carefully with a night glass, and had assured himself that the cone of light proceeded from some point near the surface of the water to the cloud bank in the sky! He knew, therefore, what the naked eye did not reveal, namely—that the blood-red spot in the sky was the result of a reflection of something on the water. He had been very anxious in his mind about the matter, and had made several efforts to obtain an interview with the first officer of the Caribas, who, in your absence, was in command of the ship. That gentleman was so swollen in importance by the temporary authority invested in him by your absence, however, that he would hold no intercourse with the boatswain. Had he done so, I have no doubt that the fires would have been raked and your steamer would have dropped away from the hulk, thus rendering her capture impossible.”
“He has paid dearly for his arrogance,” I interposed.
“The boatswain evidently suffered under a premonition of impending danger, though he had no idea it would come in human form,” continued the Kantoon. “He was superstitious, and expected the trouble in some unholy shape. For that reason he purposely omitted sounding ‘eight bells.’ Instead, he personally descended to the fo’castle and roused the men of the next watch. We could hear the sailors coming on deck, muttering and cursing and declaring that ‘eight bells’ had not struck, and that therefore their time to get up had not arrived. We knew this as well as the men, and did not understand the reason any better than they. The boatswain’s watch expired at 4 o’clock, but he was disinclined to go below, and, as we afterward knew to our cost, he remained on deck awake.