This was a terrible discovery. It seemed to me that the iron door had been closed for an especial purpose. I knew, however, that when the dance was over some of the audience would wish to go out, and so I waited by the curtain until the lamps were turned up, and the negro had disappeared. The men were then about to push their tables to the centre again, but the hag raised her voice and cried—
"As you are, my pretty gentleman; it's only the first part ye've been treated to. No, no; ye don't have the door drawn till ye've seen yer mother dance awhile. Good boys, all of ye, there's work to do; ho! ho! work to do, and Mother Catch will do it!"
At the words "work to do" a strange silence, which I did not then understand, fell on the company. Somehow, all the men immediately around me slunk away, and I found myself standing quite alone, with many staring at me. The four men whom most I feared had turned their backs, and were busy with their mugs; but the rest of the assembly had eyes only for the terrible woman and for myself. Presently the discordant music began again. The hag, who had been bent double, reared herself up with a "Ho!" after the fashion of a Scottish sword-dancer, and began to make a wretched shuffle with her feet. Then she moved with a hobble and a jig to the far end of the room; and she called out, beginning to come straight down to the door whereby I stood. I know not what presentiment forewarned me to beware as the creature drew near; but yet I felt the danger, and the throbbing of my heart. That I could hope for help amongst such a crew was out of the question. I had my revolver in my pocket, but had I shown it twenty barrels would have answered the folly. There was nothing to do but to face the screeching woman; and this I did as the unearthly music became louder, and the stillness of the men was speaking in its depth.
At the last, the old witch, who had danced for some moments at a distance of ten paces from the spot where I stood, became as one possessed. She made a few dreadful antics, uttered a piercing shriek, and hurled herself almost on me. In that instant I remember seeing the three men with Paolo suddenly rise to their feet, while the others in the room called out in their excitement. But the hag herself drew from her breast something that she had concealed there; and, as she stood within a yard of me, she brought it crash upon my head, and all my senses left me.
CHAPTER XIII.
ASTERN OF THE "LABRADOR."
Complete unconsciousness is a blessing, I think, which comes rarely to us. Sleep, they say, is akin to death; yet I have often questioned if there be an absolute void of existence in sleep; and I am sure that in few cases where a blow robs us of sense does the brain cease to be active or to bring dreams in its working. I have been struck down unconscious twice in my life; but in each instance I have suffered much during the after-days from that trouble of mind which is akin to the feverish dream of an exhausted system. Horrid sights does the brain then bear to us; terrible situations; weird phantoms known to the opium-eater; wild struggles with unnatural enemies; wrestlings even for existence itself. All these I knew during the days that followed my rash visit to the drinking den. How long I lay, or where, I know not to this hour; but my dreams were very terrible, and there was a fever at my head which the ice of a great lake scarce could have cooled. Often I would know that I had consciousness, and yet I could not move hand or foot, so that the terror moved me to frenzies of agony, though my lips were sealed, and I felt myself passing to death. Or I would live again through the night when Martin Hall died, and from the boat where I watched the holocaust, I climbed to the shrouds of the cutter, and stood with my poor friend in the very shelter of the spreading flames. Or I struggled with Black, having hunted him to his own quarter-deck, and there with great force of men I sought to lay hands on him; but he escaped me with a mocking laugh, and when I looked again the deck was empty.
For short moments the delirium must have left me. Once I opened my eyes, and knew that the sun shone upon me, and that the breeze which cooled my forehead blew from the sea; but my fatigue was so great that I fell asleep in the next instant, and enjoyed pure rest during many hours. When I regained consciousness for the second time, it was because rain beat upon my face, a drizzling warm rain of late summer, and there was spray from a fresh sea. For some minutes I set myself to ask where I was; but I knew that I was bound at the left hand and at my feet, and, to my unutterable astonishment, when I raised my head, I saw that I lay in an open boat which was moving very slowly, but my feet were towards the stern of it, and, as my head lay below the level of the gunwale, I could see nothing of the power which moved the boat or of the scene about us.
It was a long time before my throbbing head let me put together a chain of thought to account for my position. The scene at the drinking den would not at first come back to me, think as I would; but when it did, the clue which was lacking came with it. There could be no doubt that I had walked into a trap, and that the hag who had struck me had been in the pay of Paolo and his crew. These men must have taken me as I lay, and so brought me to this boat; but what time had intervened, or where I was, I knew no better than the dead. Only this was sure, that I was in the hands of one of the greatest scoundrels living, and that, if his past were any precedent, my hours of life would be few.