“Don’t look at me that way,” pleaded the pirate, “as if I had done the deed. You know I didn’t. I swear I didn’t! If I had been there, I would have saved Orlando at the cost of—”
He was interrupted at this point by the repetition of the cry which had before reached him in the cabin; but how much more awful did that despairing cry sound near at hand, as it issued full, deep-toned, and strong, from the chest of the Herculean man! There was a difference in it also this time—it terminated in a wild, fiendish fit of laughter, which caused Rosco to shrink back appalled; for now he knew that he confronted a maniac!
For some minutes the madman and the pirate sat gazing at each other in silent horror. Then the latter rose hastily and turned to leave the hold. As he did so, the madman sprang towards him, but he was checked by the chains which bound him, and fell heavily on the deck.
Returning to the cabin, Rosco went to a locker and took out a case bottle, from which he poured half a tumbler of brandy and drank it. Then he summoned the man who had been appointed his second in command.
“Redford,” he said, assuming, by a mighty effort of self-restraint a calm tone and manner, “you told me once of a solitary island lying a long way to the south of the Fiji group. D’you think you could lay our course for it?”
“I’m sure I could, sir; but it is very much out of the way of commerce, and—”
“There is much sandal-wood on it, is there not?” asked Rosco, interrupting him.
“Ay, sir, plenty of that, an’ plenty of fierce natives too, who will give us a warm reception. I would—”
“So much the better,” returned the captain, with a cynical smile, again interrupting; “we may be able to obtain a load of valuable wood for nothing, and get rid of our cowards at the same time. Go, lay our course for—what’s the island’s name?”
“I don’t know its right name, sir; but we call it Sugar-loaf Island from the shape of one end of it.”