Bagasse lifted his knee, snapped the sabre in two across it, and flung the pieces into the sea.
“I nevair fight nobody no more,” he said hoarsely. “I haf not zat revenge, and I care for nossing. Zey do to me evairy insult—zey keek me, zey jump on me, zey roll me in ze mud, I will not fight zem, for I haf not my revenge.”
“Come, Captain,” cried Wentworth, “let’s settle away the sails, and out with the oars.”
He flew to the jib halyards, and the Captain to the mainsail. In a minute, both sails were clewed down, and the mainsail boom lashed one side to the cleat. Wentworth and the Captain, followed by Bagasse, threw off coats and waistcoats, and seized the oars. The Captain drew up the sliding-keel, and took the stroke-oars. Bagasse and Wentworth had the other two. In a moment the blades fell, and the boat foamed through the moonlit swells.
Of all this colloquy, conducted for the most part in low voices, Antony, perched upon the cuddy-deck, and hid from sight by the mainsail, heard little or nothing, and had no idea that Harrington was in any way injured. Now that the sail was down, Harrington saw him, and beckoned him aft. He came instantly, grotesquely sidling between the two front rowers, and skipping over Captain Fisher’s oars, looking, with the gleam of the moonlight on his dark, skull-like face, something as he did on the night when Harrington found him.
“Sit down here by me, Antony,” said the young man, in his sweet, feeble voice.
Antony squatted beside him, and Harrington put his left arm around his shoulder, feeling, in his dying hours, a mild and compassionate affection for the poor creature for whom he had laid down his life.
For a little while there was silence, broken only by the regular roll of the oars in the rowlocks, the plash and dip of the blades, and the steady, seething, effervescing sound of the water foaming from the bows and stern of the boat as she shot through the lifting flood. The clouds had rolled down the east, and Harrington sat weak and suffering, with his white and beautiful face upturned to the millioned host of lambent stars—a solemn and tremendous glory of golden rain that seemed descending slowly under the frosted nebulæ and vaulted blue.
Soon his face drooped from the midnight sky, and he smiled palely on the fugitive, who was wistfully looking at him.
“How do you feel, Antony?” said the hollow and gentle voice.