Crabb hove a fearful curse at the man. The bushy-whiskered sailor who guarded him on the right significantly put his hand upon the hilt of his cutlass whilst he said something to him under his breath.
‘This is new to me,’ exclaimed Keeling, screwing his eye gimlet-fashion into the face of Bobbins, and then letting it drop, as if satisfied. ‘Mr. Hemmeridge, I have suspected you, sir; but it’s a little soon for you to talk of my having accused you. You are a medical man. If anybody knows death by looking upon it you should. Yet, though this man Crabb is merely counterfeiting death, you come aft to me and report him dead! What am I to infer? Your ignorance or your guilt, sir?’
‘Captain Keeling,’ cried I, ‘believe me when I promise you the man was not counterfeiting death. He was to all intents and purposes a corpse. How was this brought about? Surely by no exercise of his own art. The look of the eye—the droop of the jaw—the hue of the skin—Captain Keeling, it was death to the sight: no counterfeit—an effect produced by something much more powerful than the effort of such a will as that man has;’ and I pointed with my thumb at Crabb, who told me with a curse to mind my own business.
‘Mr. Dugdale, I thank you,’ said Hemmeridge, bowing to me.
Captain Keeling held up a long thin phial about three-quarters full of a dark liquor. I had not before noticed it.
‘This has been produced,’ said he, ‘by the man Bobbins, who states that it is the stuff which Crabb swallowed, and which caused the death-like aspect you saw in him.’ He put the bottle down; then clenching his fist, smote the table violently. ‘I cannot credit it!’ he cried. ‘I cannot be imposed on. Am I to believe that there is any drug in existence which will produce in a living being the exact semblance of death?’
‘Oh, I think so, sir,’ said Prance, speaking mildly.
Hemmeridge sneered.
‘A semblance of death,’ roared old Keeling, twisting round upon his chief mate, ‘capable of deceiving the eye—the practised eye of a medical man? You may give me a dose of laudanum, and I may look dead to you, sir, but not to Mr. Hemmeridge yonder. No, sir; I am not to be persuaded,’ and here he brought his fist down upon the table again. ‘It is either gross ignorance or direct connivance, and I mean to be satisfied—I mean to sift it to the bottom—I mean to get at the truth, by——!’
His face was full of blood, and he puffed and blew like a swimmer struggling for his life.