"You shall not go back for them while I'm aboard this boat," said Miss Sackett, quietly, from her seat beside me, and she seized the tiller firmly to luff the craft.
"I didn't intend to," I answered; "yet that man's cry had so much of the woman in it that it was instinctive to turn."
"Instinctive or not, here we stay. He is the biggest devil of the lot," answered the girl. "There's some horrible game in getting us away. I'm certain of it, but don't know what it can be. We'll find out when it's too late."
"We might take them aboard one at a time and bind them," I suggested. This was greeted with growlings from Chips and Johnson. Even Jenks declared it would never do, and the other sailors made antagonistic remarks. There was nothing to do but keep away and let them save themselves as best they might.
We sailed slowly around the wreck, watching her burn. Hour after hour she flamed and hissed, the heat being felt at a hundred fathoms distant. And all the while, the sharp, piping voice of our third mate screamed shrilly for succor.
After midnight the Sovereign had burned clear to the water line from aft to amidships. Even her rails along the waist were burning fiercely with the oil that had been thrown upon them by the explosions of the heated barrels. And as she burned out her oil, she sank lower and lower in the water until she gave forth huge clouds of steam and smoke instead of flaring flames. In the early hours of the morning, we were still within two hundred fathoms of her; and she showed nothing in the gray light save the mainmast and the topgallant forecastle. Her canvas had gone, and the bare black pole of her mast stuck out of the sea, which now flowed deep around the foot of it. Upon the blackened forecastle head, five human forms crouched behind the sheltering bulk of the windlass. They were silent now and motionless. While I looked, one of them staggered to his feet and stretched out his hands above his head, gazing at the light in the east. It was Andrews. He raised his clenched fists and shook them fiercely at us and at the gray sky above. Then over the calm, silent ocean came the fierce, raving curses of the doomed villain.
A gentle air was stirring the swell in the east, which soon filled our sail. We kept the boat's head away until she pointed in the direction of the African cape. And so we sailed away, with the echoes of that villain's voice ringing in our ears, calling forth fierce curses upon the God he had denied.
I turned away from the horrible spectacle of that grisly hulk with its human burden. As I did so, my eyes met those of Miss Sackett. She lowered hers, took out her handkerchief and, bowing over, buried her face in it, crying as though her heart would break.
XVII
"If you'll pass the pannikin, I'll take a drink, sir," said Jenks, after the sun had risen and warmed the chilly air of the southern ocean.