The girl and I had passed through some evil, dark, and dangerous hours since we first came together in that furious Saturday night's gale; but never was the worst of them all comparable to this middle-watch through which we sat, for hard upon two hours of it, in gloom, in the ocean silence that lay upon the barque, imagining the movement of dark shapes in the blackness that came like a wall to the cabin-door, and the gleam of swiftly receding eyes peering at us through the cabin skylight. Regularly through the stillness sounded the combined tread of Abraham and his mate, over our heads, with sometimes a halt that almost startled the ear, while we could clearly catch the grumbling growling of their conversation as they passed the skylight on their way to and fro.
Yet, strangely enough—I am speaking for myself—the horror of the double assassination did not lie upon my spirit with the deadening weight I should have imagined as the effect of so shocking, sudden, and bloody a tragedy. That which might have been acute horror was subdued into little more than a dull and sickening consternation by perception of our own peril. Yet I would look at those berths lying on either side the cuddy front, as though from either one or the other of them the figure of the Captain or his mate must stalk! The stain upon the cabin-deck lay black as ink against the Captain's door. To think that that was all of him his barque now contained!
We sat whispering about the unhappy creature and his wretched subordinate; then our talk went to other matters. I told Helga we need not question that the intention of the crew was to cast the vessel away upon some part of the South African coast, near enough to Cape Town to enable them to trudge the distance, but too remote from civilization for the movements of the barque to be witnessed. That was their resolution, I said: I would swear to it as though it had been revealed to me. That they would never suffer us three men to land alive we might be as sure as that they had slaughtered Bunting and his mate.
'Their oath counts for nothing, you think?' said she.
I answered, 'Nothing: they would value their lives above their oath. Not likely they would suffer us to testify to their crime.' Under the serpent-fair exterior of Nakier lay as passionless a capacity of murder as ever formed the mechanical instinct of any deadly beast or reptile.
'His eye,' I said, 'will never be off us.' Even as we whispered, his gaze, or that of another subtle as himself, might be upon us. He was the one to fear; and this carried me into asking, 'What is to be done?'
Yet, before the hands of the clock were upon the hour of four, we knew what was to be done. It was wholly Helga's scheme. Her brain had planned it all; but it was not until she spoke and delivered her plot bit by bit that I understood the reason of her silence while I had been feverishly whispering my fears, talking of the Captain, of Nakier, of the treachery of the Malay and Cingalese miscreants, and asking, as one might think aloud, 'What is to be done?'
We went on deck at four; it was the darkest hour of the night, but very quiet. I bade Abraham and the other man go forward and turn in, as had heretofore been their custom.
'Not a word!' I cried, in swift response to the first of Jacob's remonstrance. 'I cannot speak here. There are thirsty ears at the wheel. We have planned that long before this time to-morrow the barque shall be our own, with nothing more for you to do than to calculate the value of the salvage. I'll find an early chance to explain—but not here! not now! Forward with you both; for our lives depend upon the fellows believing that we have confidence in them.'
This I spoke as rapidly as intelligibility would permit, and, with Helga, drew away from them, moving towards the wheel. They hung as though staring and deliberating a few moments, then, without a word, went forward.