A whispered Conspiracy.
Although most of the men had surrendered themselves to such slumber as they might obtain, the silence was neither profound nor continuous. At times no sounds were heard save the whisperings of the breeze, as it brushed against the spread canvas, or a slight “swashing” in the water as it was broken by the rough timbers of the craft.
These sounds were intermingled with the loud breathing of some of the sleepers,—an occasional snore,—and now and then a muttered speech the involuntary utterance of someone dreaming a dreadful dream.
At intervals other noises would arise, when one or more of the waking castaways chanced to come together, to hold a short conversation; or when one of them, scarce conscious of what he did, stumbled over the limbs of a prostrate comrade,—perhaps awaking him from a pleasant repose to the consciousness of the painful circumstances under which he had been enjoying it.
Such occurrences usually led to angry altercations,—in which threats and ribald language would for some minutes freely find vent from the lips both of the disturbed and the disturber; and then both would growlingly subside into silence.
At that hour, when the night was at its darkest, and the fog at its thickest, two men might have been seen,—though only by an eye very close to where they were,—in a sitting posture at the bottom of the mast. They were crouching rather than seated; for they were upon their knees, with their bodies bent forward, and one or both of their hands resting upon the planks.
The attitude was plainly not one of repose; and anyone near enough to have observed the two men, or to have heard the whispered conversation that was being carried on between them, would have come to the conclusion that sleep was far from their thoughts.
In that deep darkness, however, no one noticed them; and although several of their companions were lying but a few feet from the bottom of the mast, these were either asleep or too distant to hear the whisperings that passed between the two men kneeling in juxtaposition.
They continued to talk in very low whispers,—each in turn putting his lips close to the ear of the other; and while doing so the subject of their conversation might have been guessed at by their glances, or at least the individual about whom they conversed.
This was a man who was lying stretched along the timbers, not far from the bottom of the mast, and apparently asleep. In fact he must have been asleep, as was testified by the stentorian snores that occasionally escaped from his wide-spread nostrils.