‘Now,’ said he, looking somewhat pale, ‘what’s next to be done?’
‘Call Rotch aft,’ said I; ‘I’ll bring Captain Butler out.’
‘Collins,’ said the mate, ‘keep her just as she goes. Captain Rotch, will you please step this way into the cabin?’
I went in first; Bates and Will followed. I saw Rotch coming as I knocked on Tom’s door and entered. My sweetheart stood against his bunk, one hand gripping the edge of it, and his head inclined forward in a strained, hearkening posture. His face was colourless, the expression hard and set; his eyes shone under the shadow of a frown of fierce determination.
I said, speaking with difficulty, so great was my agitation: ‘The islanders have left the brig. We have started, and the man’s in the cabin.’
‘Bates and Will? They must hear and see.’
‘They, too, are in the cabin.’
‘Where’s Nodder?’
‘Lying ill in the forecastle.’
On this he opened the door and went out; I was at his heels. Rotch stood on the other side of the cabin table, Will at the foot, and near him Bates; Rotch was at that instant addressing the mate. When he saw Tom the movement of his lips was arrested as though he had been shot through the heart. He stared in a sort of gaping way—the expression is not to be described. Let me call it chilling, benumbing amazement, with horror and fear, like a sort of life, creeping into it. I had read of men changing colour under mental tension of an extravagant kind; I witnessed this now; whilst Rotch looked, gaping, the blankness of amazement taking a vitality from the incrawling horror, his balls of sight strained as though he beheld his fate in the form of some frightful phantom, his complexion changed colour; not from the white of fear to the crimson of rage; it turned, whilst I looked, into a sort of dim, blueish purple, as if he had been poisoned. His lips then moved and he stammered out, in a voice that was half a scream—the words bursting from him—‘You here!’ The next instant he sprang toward the door. But Tom stood close to the entrance; with a single stride he blocked the way, and said, ‘Stand back!’