Greer shook his head dully. "But this is all the wildest—" he made a helpless motion. "You oughtn't to think about it, sir, or you'll be going overboard, too. Reshipped!... This heat will get anybody in time.... The man who wrote that went and jumped overboard the next minute no doubt. Reshipped..... It ain't good for us to read it, sir."
"But something's gone with her cargo, Greer!" declared Madden vehemently. "Something's gone with it. I don't care how crazy the crew became they surely wouldn't have dumped a hold full of copper into the sea. This log says 'reshipped' and blessed if I don't believe—"
At this moment the boys seemed to hear the sound in the deathly silent vessel for which their ears had been all the time straining. Madden broke off abruptly and both stood listening with palpitating hearts. It was repeated. A repressed half groan, inarticulate, as if some human being were in distress. It was in the main cabin below them.
Hardly daring to guess at what they would see, the adventurers crept silently out of the chart room, down a short hot passageway to a door. Leonard caught a breath, then opened it without noise.
In the brilliant westering light that flooded the main cabin through the port holes, Madden saw a dining table, disordered as from a recent feast. On the floor around it were fragments of smashed glasses and bloody stains. A cut glass decanter, half full of wine, sat on the table, and in a corner of the cabin shrank the figure of a man.
CHAPTER IX
A MODERN COLUMBUS
Hardly knowing what to expect the two advanced into the cabin, when the figure turned and looked at them with pallid countenance.
"It's Caradoc!" cried Madden in great astonishment and relief. "Scots, Smith, you gave us a jolt! We thought—what's the matter, old chap? Heat again?"