"Chaw!" said the mate. "But try 'em, if you will. They may take the boat when the moon's up, should there come no wind first."
An hour later the steward told me that two of the sailors were seized with cramps and convulsions. After this no more was said about taking the boat and sinking the body. The mate went into the forecastle. On his return, he begged me to go and look at the men.
"Better make sure that it's cholera with them too, sir," said he. "You know the signs;" and, folding his arms, he leaned against the bulwarks in a posture of profound dejection.
I went forward and descended the forescuttle, and found myself in a small cave. The heat was over-powering; there was no air to pass through the little hatch; the place was dimly lighted by an evil-smelling lamp hanging under a beam but, poor as the illumination was, I could see by it, and when I looked at the men and spoke to them, I saw how it was, and came away sick at heart, and half dead with the hot foul air of the forecastle, and in deepest distress of mind, moreover, through perceiving that the two men had formed a part of the crew of the boat when we visited the raft.
One died at six o'clock next morning, and the other at noon; but before this second man was dead three others had been attacked, and one of them was the mate. And still never a breath of air stirred the silver surface of the sea.
The mate was a strong man, and his fear of death made the conflict dreadful to behold. I was paralyzed at first by the suddenness of the thing and the tremendous character of our calamity, and, never doubting that I must speedily prove a victim as being one who had gone in the boat, I cast myself down upon a sofa in the cabin and there sat, waiting for the first signal of pain, sometimes praying, or striving to pray, and seeking hard to accustom my mind to the fate I regarded as inevitable. But a keen and biting sense of my cowardice came to my rescue. I sprang to my feet and went to the mate's berth, and nursed him till he died, which was shortly before midnight of the day of his seizure—so swift and sure was the poison we had brought from the raft. He was dropped over the side, and a few hours later he was followed by three others. I cannot be sure of my figures: it was a time of delirium, and I recall some details of it with difficulty, but I am pretty sure that by the morning of the fourth day of our falling in with the accursed raft the ship's company had been reduced to the boatswain and five men, making, with myself, seven survivors of fifteen souls who had sailed from Calcutta.
It was some time about the middle of the fifth day—two men were lying stricken in the forecastle—the boatswain and a couple of seamen came aft to the quarter-deck where I was standing. The wheel was deserted: no man had grasped it since the captain's death; indeed, there was nothing to be done at the helm. The ocean floated in liquid glass; the smell of frying paint, bubbled into cinders by the roasting rays, rose like the stench of a second plague to the nostrils. The boatswain and his companions had been drinking; no doubt they had broached the rum casks below. They had never entered the cabin to my knowledge nor do I believe they got their liquor from there. The boatswain carried a heavy weight of some sort, bound in canvas, with a long lanyard attached to it. He flung the parcel into the quarter-boat, and roared out—
"If that don't drag the blistered cuss out of sight I'll show the fired carcass the road myself. Cholera or no cholera, here goes!"
"What are you going to do?" said I.
"Do?" he cried; "why sink that there plague out of it, so as to give us a chance of a breeze. Ain't this hell's delight? What's a-going to blow us clear whilst he keeps watch?" And he nodded with a fierce drunken gesture toward the raft.