"The plague, sir."
"O-oh!" The American stared around the deck with new eyes. Greer's explanation struck home with a certain convincingness. The mere thought of disease-laden surroundings filled him with alarm. Could they have unwittingly wandered into a deserted pest-ship? A focus of death in these rotting seas? The very air he breathed, the wood he touched, might inoculate him with malignant germs. Then he began reasoning on it.
"Even if it were the plague, there ought to be someone left aboard, Greer, a last corpse." The American sniffed the hot, breathless, tar-scented air.
"He could well have gone crazy, sir, in this heat and followed his mates overboard—but we can look and see."
At this moment, Caradoc stirred and pulled himself to a sitting posture on the burning deck.
"You—you pulled me aboard?" he murmured weakly, looking about with the face of a corpse.
"How do you feel—anything I can do?"
"If I had a dr—" he broke off, drew a long breath. "Nobody aboard?"
"If you're all right, Greer and I will take a turn below and see what we can find," suggested Madden.
Caradoc nodded apathetically and stared seaward toward the cable sagging into the dead ocean.