It is scarce necessary to tell who were the two men who had been thus plotting in whispers. The first speaker was, of course, the Frenchman, Le Gros,—the other being the confederate who had assisted him in the performance of his unfair trick in the lot-casting.
Their demoniac design is already known from their conversation,—nothing more nor less than to murder O’Gorman in his sleep!
The former had two motives prompting him to this horrid crime,—either sufficiently strong to sway such a nature as his to its execution. He had all along felt hostility to the Irishman,—which the events of that day had rendered both deep and deadly. He was wicked enough to have killed his antagonist for that alone. But there was the other motive, more powerful and far more rational to influence him to the act. As above stated, it had been finally arranged that the suspended fight was to be finished by the earliest light of the morning. Le Gros knew that the next scene in that drama of death was to be the last; and, judging from his experience of the one already played, he felt keenly apprehensive as to the result. He had been fully aware, before the curtain fell upon the first act, that his life could then have been taken; and, conscious of a certain inferiority to his antagonist, he now felt cowed, and dreaded the final encounter.
To avoid it, he was willing to do anything, however mean or wicked,—ready to commit even the crime of murder!
He knew that if he should succeed in destroying his adversary,—so long as the act was not witnessed by their associates,—so long as there should be only circumstantial evidence against him,—he would not have much to fear from such judges as they. It was simply a question as to whether the deed could be done silently and in the darkness; and that question was soon to receive an answer.
The trick of killing the unfortunate man with his own knife,—and making it appear that he had committed self-destruction,—would have been too shallow to have been successful under any other circumstances; but Le Gros felt confident that there would be no very strict investigation; and that the inquest likely to be held on the murdered man would be a very informal affair.
In any case, the risk to him would be less than that he might expect on the consummation of the combat,—the finale of which would in all probability, be the losing of his life.
He was no longer undecided about doing the foul deed. He had quite determined upon it; and the attempt now being made by his confederate to steal the knife was the first stop towards its perpetration.
The theft was too successfully accomplished. The wretch on getting up to the rum-cask, was seen to sit down silently by its side; and, after a few moments passed in this position he again rose erect, and moved back towards the mast. Dark as was the night, Le Gros could perceive something glittering in the hand of his accomplice, which he knew must be the coveted weapon.
It was so. The sleeper had been surreptitiously disarmed.