‘The poor man Johnson is dead!’ she exclaimed.
‘Ah! I feared it. I believed I could hear death in his voice when he spoke in his sleep last night.’
‘Cutbill and Head,’ she continued, for she was now well acquainted with the names of the men, ‘have carried his body to bury in the sea past that slope there.’
I sat silent a little. I had all along secretly expected that the man would die, yet the news that he was dead strangely affected me. It might be because he had been amongst the saved, and it seemed hard and cruel that he should perish after having come off with his life out of a conflict that had destroyed robuster men. Then again there was the loneliness of his death, expiring, perhaps, after vainly struggling to make some whispered wants audible to our sleeping ears or to the nodding figure standing at a distance from him on the look-out.
I sent a look round the sea, compassing the blue line as fully as the blaze would permit. The calm was as dead as it had been throughout the night. In the west the heads of a few clouds of the burning hue of polished brass showed with a stare out of a dimness over the sea there. There was bitter loathing of all this deadness and tranquillity in me as I stepped to the side for a sight of Finn down on the beach. What phantom of chance was there for us unless a breeze blew? Dowling was at work below winding with his auger into the galleon’s side. He had made two further holes to starboard, and was now piercing a third.
‘There ain’t anything like the first weight of water in her now, sir,’ he sung out; ‘see how languid these here spurts are as compared to yesterday’s spouting.’
I overhauled the whip that was rove at the end of the derrick, secured the end, and went down hand over hand. My skin felt parched and feverish and thirsty for a dip. ‘I’m off for a plunge,’ I called to Laura, who came to the side to look at me as I slipped down. I found Finn exploring amongst the wreckage on the shore; Cutbill and Head were then coming round from the other side of the island, their heads hung and their feet taking the pumice rocks with funeral strides.
‘How are you, Finn?’ I called to him.
‘Thank God, I feel myself again. The pain in my side’s gone, and my breath comes easy. Poor Johnson’s dead.’
‘I know.’