"From jealousy and mutual distrust, we all slept in the cabin. There were plenty of staterooms for the crowd, though some of us doubled up. None of us wanted to remain away from the seven chests of treasure, and the Japanese cook, who might have slept in the cook's room next the galley, still showed a preference for his room in the cabin, and we did not contest it. But now we were millionaires and easy—dead easy. We stood watch, steered and trimmed sail with no man for boss, for now the work was done, Gleason and myself and the nigger Pango gave up our false positions. We were a democracy, and loved and trusted one another, only, when we roused out the watch below and found that old man Sullivan did not come, and on investigation found him stone dead in his berth without a sign of violence, we forgot our brotherly love and began to wonder.
"We did not know what he died of, but we gave him sea burial that day, and Gleason read a chapter from the book. We concluded that the old man had died of heart failure, or old age, and thought no more about it after the day had passed. But, when we called the watch at eight bells next mornin', we couldn't get one of the Swanson brothers up. He was cold and stiff; and there was nothing wrong with him either. That is, he had turned in cheerful and healthy and died during sleep, leaving no sign.
"The other Swanson raised merry hell that day, raving about the deck, mourning for his dead brother. But his grief was short-lived, for when we tried to waken him next watch he was cold and stiff. We buried him with the ceremonies, and began to think—all of us. We wondered whether men may rake up ill-gotten treasure from a dead past without coming under influences of that dead past. We thought of the conquered and enslaved natives, laboring in the mines for the aggrandizement and enrichment of Spain, and giving up their lives in the work, unrecognized and forgotten, while their exploiters, the children and relatives of Ferdinand and Isabella, sat back in luxury and self-satisfaction. We wondered as to what was killing our shipmates, ghosts or poison.
"Naturally, we suspected the cook, and Pango, the Dagoes, and the surviving Sou'wegian were for tossing him overboard; but the rest of us wouldn't have it. There was no evidence of poison, and as we'd done no killing so far in our piratical venture, we'd better keep clear of it now, with so much at stake. A court that would acquit us as soldiers of fortune that had merely borrowed a schooner might hang us as pirates and murderers; but we watched the Jap. We kept him away from the grub while we ate it. He brought it on in two or more big dishes, and there was no chance of his poisoning one without the rest. We weren't afraid of that.
"I examined Swanson thoroughly before we buried him, and there wasn't a mark on him, or a sign of anything out of the way, except what didn't seem in any way important, just below each ear, and back of the corner of the cheek bone, was a little pink spot; but there was no blood, and no sign of finger prints on the throat.
"Peters, the romantic young fellow, got ghosts on his mind, and as he thought about it, they got on his nerves. He couldn't sleep, and walked around, up and down from the cabin to the deck. The others slept in their watch below, and on that night nobody died. But the next night Peters was too exhausted to stay awake, and he went to sleep on the cabin floor alongside the chests. We couldn't waken him at eight bells, and we knew his troubles were over. At daylight I examined his body. Nothing wrong, only the two little pink spots under the ears. We buried him at daylight, with scant pretense of a burial service. Things were looking serious.
"All this time we were plowing along before the trade wind, but it soon panned out and we had light, shifty airs from all directions, with rain—regular Gulf Stream weather. It made us bad-tempered, and Pango and Gleason had a fight. It was a bad fight, and we couldn't stop them; both were powerful men, and as they brushed into me in their whirling lunge along the deck, locked tight, they knocked me six feet away. When I got to my feet, Pango had Gleason down and was choking him. I got a handspike and battered that coon's head with it; but he wouldn't let go, and before others came up to help he had killed him. He went for me, but had to stop before the handspikes of the crowd.
"Now, with Gleason dead, the command devolved upon me or Pango, and this fellow was in a mood to demand the place. He could lick any three of us, but not all hands; but, while we were growling about it and cooling down, we found other troubles to keep us busy. We had piled several tons' weight on the weak cabin floor timbers of an old schooner, and of a sudden, down they crashed to the hold below, leaving a yawning hole in the cabin floor and starting a butt or two in the planking. It was pump, pump, pump, now, for we couldn't rig any kind of a purchase to clear those busted chests away from the leak. Pango was a good worker, and, under the pressure of extreme fatigue, we forgot our grudges. I did not care for the cheap position of command over a bunch of foreigners, and so we made Pango skipper, while I remained navigator and mate. Pango promptly quit pumping, saying that skippers don't pump. And that night he quit everything. As skipper he stood no watch, but at breakfast time he was cold, with the same little marks under his ears. On his skin, however, they showed a brownish black.
"Gleason had been choked to death, and I had examined the imprint of Pango's fingers before we buried him. There was hardly a sign; nothing at all to show that the little pink spots came from the pressure of a strangler's grip. Besides, you cannot choke a man asleep without waking him. He would make some kind of a fuss, and apprise others; but that never happened.
"There were but seven of us now, three Germans, two Dagoes, the Jap, and myself. I talked with that Jap. He was an educated man, highly trained in one of our universities; but he couldn't tell me anything, he said. It was all mysterious and horrible—this quiet taking off of men while they slept. As for poisoning, of which he knew he was suspected, it was absurd. There was no poison on board, to begin with; and why should he, a landsman, seek to poison the men who could take the ship and treasure to port? What could he do alone on the sea? This was logical, and as he was a small, weak, and confiding sort of creature, I exonerated him in my mind from any suspicion of choking the victims.