‘Captain, it’s come upon me now! I had a sort o’ fancy o’ ’t whilst I stood a-listening. You’ll be the party meant, and I’ll just give you what’s in my head whilst I’ve got it. I was at the wheel one night from ten to twelve, about a fortnight afore we was burnt out of the ship.’
‘You mean the Arab Chief?’ said Mr. Bates.
‘Oh yes!’ I cried wildly. ‘For God’s sake, don’t interrupt him, Mr. Bates!’
‘Well, as I says,’ continued the man, after a pause and a slow, unintelligent stare at me, ‘I was at the wheel. Nodder, he had charge of the deck. He’d been drinking. I’ll say here that that there Nodder was never off drinking. I don’t believe he was sober two hours together down to the moment when we was burnt out. He gives me a certain course to steer by. ’Twarn’t the course the chap I’d relieved had named. The capt’n—that’s Rotch—comes up, looks into the binnacle, calls Nodder, and hazes him for being off his course. Nodder gives it him back. I reckon that the capt’n had taken a drop too much himself. They clenches fists, and snorts all kinds of insults at each other. Nodder says: “I’ll gibbet ye yet for a bloody conspirator against an honester man than ever slept in your fired skin. ’Twas you who put me up to that job. I ha’n’t had no peace since, and where is my fifty pounds?” Here Rotch whispers through his teeth and takes him by the arm, and falls a-shoving of him out of my hearing. And still Nodder sings out whilst t’other was a-shoving: “I’ll gibbet ye yet. The lie was yourn, the whole b’iling of it was yourn. Who hid the auger? Who told me to spin that yarn to the crew about the capt’n coming for’ards to ask me to lend him an auger?”’
Tom struck the table a furious blow with his clenched fist.
‘Tell us all you know, Collins,’ I cried.
‘Why,’ said he, picking up his cap and fastening a nervous eye on Tom, ‘that’s pretty nigh all I do know. They shut up arter this and went below for a drink, then walked the deck. Capt’n Rotch seemed to make nothen of my overhearing him, as though ’twasn’t a business the likes of me was going to trouble his head over. And he was right. I don’t recollect mentioning what I’d heard except once, about a week afore we was burnt out, when there was some trouble over the starboard watch’s allowance of sugar; then I tells one of my mates that the capt’n and Nodder had got some dirty secret between them, and that each seemed in t’other’s power. But nothen was made of this, and then comes the fire. It whips into my head whilst I stood a-listening to ye just now, and, capt’n, I’ve told ye the truth.’
‘This should be taken down,’ said Bates.
‘Can you write, Collins?’ asked Tom.
The man, with a grin, answered ‘No.’