What had happened?
Even now, as I thought, was the villain lying dead, with the auger in his hand?
The minutes rolling past seemed eternal. Five, ten, twenty minutes came and went. The sun's lower limb was close against the water-line, sipping the ruby splendour it had kindled. The breeze was now close at hand, but we still lay in a breathless calm, and the sails flapped softly to the tuneful motion of the deep.
Then some of the men who remained on deck went over the ship's side, leaving four of the crew on the main-deck close against the gangway. These men sometimes looked at me, sometimes into the cuddy, sometimes forward, but none of them spoke.
Now the sun was half hidden, and the soft breeze blowing upon the sails, outlined the masts against those which were backed.
Suddenly—and I started as though I had beheld a ghost—the carpenter came round from before the galley, and walked quickly to the gangway.
"Over with you, lads!" he cried.
Like rats leaping from a sinking hull they dropped, one after the other, into the long-boat, the carpenter going last. Their painter was fast to a chain-plate, and they cast it adrift. The quarter-boat was in tow, and in a few minutes both boats stood at some two or three cables' lengths from the ship, the men watching her.
The last glorious fragment of the sinking sun fled, and darkness came creeping swiftly over the sea.
I had stood like one in whom life had suddenly been extinguished—too much amazed to act. Seeing the carpenter return, I had made sure that he had killed the boatswain; but his behaviour contradicted this supposition. Had he been attacked by the boatswain and killed him, would he have quitted the ship without revenging himself upon me, whom he would know to be at the bottom of this conspiracy against his life?