“Und vhat vas to become of her share, Mr. Fielding?”
“He’ll not be cold for some hours, and he keeps his share till we bury him.”
I walked away. When I turned the Dutchman still stood where I had left him, looking toward me. He then rolled forward and entered the caboose.
There was no more weight of wind. In a few hours’ time I should be keeping the brig more off for the Horn. I forget our latitude on the day of Greaves’ death. It was something south of the parallel of the Horn, and our longitude was right for a shift of the helm.
I walked the deck, thinking much of Greaves. What had killed him? He had been long a-dying, ever since his accident, indeed. No doubt that injury betwixt his ribs had brought about his death, and I reckoned his craziness to have been a consequence of that injury, though to be sure, his mind, as we would say at sea, had been launched with a list. But he was dead, and I was alone in the brig with a treasure of half a million of silver to carry home, and with a crew of men I did not trust.
No, it was not Bol’s question that had startled me. The moment I came on deck, after leaving the dead captain, I realized my loneliness, and all my old misgivings stormed in upon me till, I give you my word, I stood with my back upon the helm, panting as after a run, with the sudden passion of anxiety that uprose.
Presently, after walking and reasoning myself into something of soberness, I thought I would have Yan Bol aft. I called; he put his head out of the caboose; I beckoned, and he approached, thrusting his pipe into his breeches pocket. It was his watch below, and he had a right to smoke on deck.
“The captain is dead,” said I. “Let us talk of the affairs of the brig.”
“I vhas villing to talk, but you valked off, Mr. Fielding.”
“I walked off because I was fresh from the side of a friend who is dead.”