At seven o'clock I dined as usual, no one coming to me; and at eight the negro had cleared away the repast, and had left me for the night. I closed my own door, and for three hours or more I paced my chamber, the fever of anticipation and of design burning me as with fire. It must have been eleven o'clock when at last I put out my light, and listened in the passage; yet heard nothing, not even the echo of a distant sound.
Of the doors about, the majority were closed; but the doctor's was open, and his room was in darkness, so that I began to fear that he was closeted with Black; and I went very stealthily, having left my boots behind me, to the man's study, and found that door ajar as it had been when I had come to it some hours before. This discovery set me almost drunk with hope. There was no doubt that both the men were away from their rooms, so that my time could not have been better chosen; and, more fearless in their absence, I pushed the door wide open and began to feel my way in the blinding dark.
My first proceeding was to run upon some slight article of furniture, and to overturn it. The crash that followed echoed through the vaulted passages, and I stood quite still, thinking that all chance of success had gone with the mishap. But no sound followed, and after many minutes I went on again with great care, feeling my way as a cat, quite sure that at last I should succeed. Twice I went round the room, and could not put my hand upon the rifles; but at the third attempt I found them, and gave a sigh of relief. Then an overwhelming terror struck me chill and powerless. My sigh was echoed from the corner by the window; and a low chuckle of laughter followed it. I stood as a man petrified, my hand upon a gun, but my nerves strained to a tension that was horrible to bear. Who was there with me? By whom was I watched?
Alas! I knew in another moment, when the electric light flooded the chamber, and I saw Black sitting at his writing-table, observing me, a jeer upon his lips, and all the terrible malice of his nature written in his keen and mocking eyes. I stood transfixed by that searching gaze, held spellbound by the fascination of the obvious danger, my hand still upon one of the rifles, yet trembling with the agitation of discovery. Words rose to my lips—excuses, pleadings; but they died away in my throat, and I could not utter them. Plans for the undoing of that which had been done, ways of escape, efforts to gain time, suggested themselves to me, but remained suggestions. I could do nothing but stand and sway my body as a victim before a python—the prey before a snake that is about to strike.
We must have watched each other thus for a minute or more. I saw during those moments when I was bereft of all power that the man had a revolver cocked at his left hand, but a pen in his right; while manuscript lay before him, so that he must have been in the room for some time, and had extinguished his light only at my coming. And he had heard me quit my own chamber, I did not doubt; yet this surprised me, for I had no shoes upon my feet, and had walked with the stealth of a cat. Indeed, he appeared to read the fleeting speculations of my thought, and at last to take pity on my position, for he leant over the table, and drew near to it a lounge on which the skin of a polar bear was spread.
"Sit here," he said, and at the bluff word my nerve came back to me. I sat before him, facing him with less fear. Yet it was humiliating to be treated almost as a child, and I knew from the inflexion of his voice that he spoke to me then as one would speak to a school-lad who had played truant. And in this tone he continued—
"You're a smart boy, and have ideas; but, like all little boys, your ideas don't go far enough. I was just the same when I was your age, always trying to climb perpendicular places, and always falling down again. When you're older, you look to see what your hold's like before you begin. Meanwhile, you're like a little dog barking at a bull, and you're precious lucky not to be over the hedge by this time—maybe the bull doesn't mind you, maybe he's waiting a day—but take his advice and go to kennel awhile."
He said this half-laughing, and in no sense fiercely; but his words angered me beyond restraint, and I could have struck him as he sat. He saw my anger, and ceased his provocation.
"Silly lad," he said again, "silly beyond expression to put your head into a business which never concerned you, and to stake your life on a struggle which must have only one end. Don't you think so?"
At this I plucked up courage and answered him—
"I came here to-night to stop your devilry in murdering fifty innocent men;" but he started up at the words and raved like a maniac.
"And who made you judge, you puppy?" he cried. "Who set you to watch me, or give your opinions on what I do or what I don't do? Who asked you whether you liked it or didn't like it, you sneaking little brat? I wonder I let you live to spit your dirty words in my face?"
His anger was fierce, terrible as a tornado. His teeth gnashed, his hands shook, he rolled in his chair like a great wounded beast; but when he saw that I was unmoved, he fell quiet again, and wiping his forehead, where the sweat had gathered thickly, he said in a low, coaxing voice—
"Don't compel me, lad, to do what I have meant not to do. You're here for good or ill, and if you wish to keep your life, put a control on your tongue. These men are nothing to you; they're lazy hogs that the world's well rid of—let 'em die, and save your own carcass. You've been here days now—the first man that ever lived among us without signing our papers. But you can't stay that way any longer. You know this business. You've a straight notion that my hand's agen Europe, and, for the matter of that, agen the world, too; those that share with me shall swing with me, and if I burn when it's done, by the devil himself they shall burn too. It isn't of my asking that you're amongst us, or that you took up the work of the hound Hall, who put the first nail in his coffin that night he came to my bed at Spezia. I saw him there, though he thought me sleeping; and that night I wrote death against his name, as I wrote it against yours when you entered my room in Paris. There's reasons why I've broken my word in your case, though you'll never know 'em; but there's no reason why you shouldn't swear to go through it with me and mine, man for man, life with life, be it rope's-end or bullet, to rot among the fish, or to share every mate among us what's got upon the sea. That's my question, and you'll answer it now, yes or no, plain word and no shuffle; meaning to you whether you go on as you've gone on in the past, or freeze amongst the others lying up there in the cavern; whether you swim in money, as my lot swim in it, or get bullets in you thick as hail from northward. That's my question, I say again, and there's my papers. Sign 'em now, or you lie a corpse before an hour on the clock."
He leant over his writing-table and put the paper into my hands, a rough sheet of parchment, which he wished me to read. But my eyes were dimmed with the restless excitement of the situation, with the dread terror of the alternative put to me; and I saw nothing but lines of writing which swam before me. The silence of the room was terrible to bear; and it was as though I struggled for life while already in the tomb. My thoughts went hurriedly to Europe, to my home, to my friends; above all I recalled the night when Martin Hall went to his death, and his shadow seemed by me, his face beseeching me, his hand holding mine back from the pen that it would have clutched. During this time the man Black leant towards me, and watched me, expectancy in his face, threatening in his pose. Yet he did not speak, and my eyes left the paper and I gave him look for look, and from his face my glance passed to his right hand which held the pistol; and in that instant I took heart for a step which was the last mad design of a driven man.
"Give me the pen!" I said suddenly, rising and bending over the table.
He put the pen into my hands, and leant back with a chuckle of satisfaction; but the movement cost him the game. I clutched his pistol with a lightning grasp, and covered him with it—
"If