"It may be two too many, sir," said the Captain dryly. But I could see I had impressed him. As for Roderick, he was as wide awake as ever I saw him in my life.
"Of course, old Scribe's right," he cried, striking half-a-dozen matches in his excitement. "Let's know if there is anything worth fighting for before we sharpen our hatchets. No treasure—no guns. We came on a picnic—there's no denying that; and if it's no more than a picnic, we shall have seen Ice Haven, anyway. Mitchell won't fight unless the dollars are on the table. Let us find them, and then come to terms with him, if we can. Now, what do you say to that, Captain?"
Well, the Captain said nothing at all, for what should happen in the thick of it but that we heard a great shouting and stamping on deck: and presently in comes Billy Eightbells, with half-a-dozen shaking men upon his heels, and the babel they set up would have done credit to a monkey-house. When Billy found his tongue to tell us what happened, we laughed aloud at him. The hunchback of Dolphin's Cove had shown his face in the fo'castle, said he, and the men swore it with great fists smiting from pretty black hands.
"Dan, he were awake, and he seed him first—he ain't no man for speerits. Then Martin, the fireman, cried out that the devil was athwart his hawse—and Martin's no female in a sou'-wester. There was eight of we, and weight that swears to his blue mug. He's aboard this ship, Captain, sure and certain, and if you turn up the hands, you'll take him. We says it—all on us. There ain't a man as don't sign to it—you may lay to that, Captain. Jack-o'-Lantern's aboard us, and there'll be some that will know it If he ain't put over this night."
They spoke all together; this man contradicting that, and a third swearing that what the others had said was false. We laughed at Billy Eightbells when he began to tell us the amazing tale; but such earnestness as we witnessed was irresistible, and no sooner had the whole story been blabbed than the Captain strode out to the deck and called for our first officer, that quiet Scotsman, Mr. Farquharson. He was already in his bunk, but he came out presently in a long overall and listened to the news wide-eyed.
"You hear, Mr. Farquharson," cried the skipper, "the men say we have a stowaway, the hunchback that came over from Falmouth."
"I'm thinking it more likely that he would have come out of a keg of rum, sir."
Even grim Captain York smiled.
"Ah," says he, "that kind of spirit does not see with a single eye, Mr. Farquharson. But I'll trouble you to go round the ship with me, all the same. The man that trips up upon a ghost is a poor bedfellow— there are about eight of them down below. Let us try to get them to sleep, sir, before they give the spirit a tail."
He called for lanterns, and a search party fell in. Billy Eightbells was sent up to the bridge that he might have a view of the whole ship. There was a sentinel posted astern, and another ordered to the maintop of the short foremast. The rest, armed with lanterns, went down to the depths, searched the fo'castle from end to end, dived into the coal-bunkers, went to the very profundity of the ship and tracked the iron tunnel in which the screw-shaft runs. Our steward, the nimble old fellow they call Pharaoh, because he is given to stories of the Red Sea, then opened the doors of the cabins we were not using and helped us to lay them bare. We had all the lights on in the saloons, the galleys, and even in the bath rooms, but went as near to finding a ghost as a bag full of diamonds.
In a way the search was both a ridiculous and a picturesque thing enough. If a satirist had laughed at the anxious faces thrust forward into this or that nook or cranny, an artist would have seen the same faces aglow with the lanterns' light and eloquent of many emotions. And just as action is the surest antidote to fear, so was our search the best answer we could make to Billy Eightbells and the faint-hearts. They were willing to admit, when it was done, that what they had seen might not have been seen after all; and they turned in at length, encouraging each other with smooth words, but taking mighty good care that no man went alone. When they were gone, the skipper hinted that we should do well to imitate them. It was just one o'clock of the morning and two bells sounded as I shut my cabin door. But I think I was just as far from sleep as ever I had been in all my life.
Consider how it went with me. The last time I had sailed into this haven I had been a close prisoner on Black's ship. The only friend I had known then was Osbart, the mad Doctor. When they took me ashore I saw fearful things done: men fighting naked with knives, men shot down and buried in the snow—drink, debauchery, horror of all kinds. Now, for the second time, I visited Ice Haven to see if it were true that Black's treasure lay hidden here, and was a fact and not a fable. Setting out upon what had promised to be but a pleasure cruise, inviting Roderick and Mary to accompany me, I found myself instantly at the heart of a dangerous adventure; threatened I knew not by what perils; haunted by fears and dreams I would have confessed to no man. And from these perils my wit must save me, as it had saved me on board the Nameless Ship, and even on the lonely Atlantic where the great Captain had met his death.
This latter thought ran in my head to the exclusion of others. I must save my friends, must justify my beliefs, must outwit these Americans who had beaten us in the race. Upon it at last I think that I fell into a light sleep; but it was a sleep troubled by dreams, and chiefly a dream of the hunchback for whom we had searched so vainly. Unlike the men, I did not fear this apparition at all, even when it seemed (in my sleep) that he opened the port above me and crept softly upon my bed.
Now spoke the logic of the dream, and said that if the man had hidden from us at all, he had hidden in the main chains, leaping overboard when a hue and cry was raised, and laughing, I doubt not, while we searched the ship. I said that it must be so, and, starting up in a sweat, I saw that my cabin was empty. Now a new dread fell upon me, but not a dread of the hunchback.
How to tell you of this I hardly know. The cabin was as it had been when I dropped to a fitful sleep; and yet I felt that it was not the same. Once I thought I heard a sound of heavy breathing at my door; but when I switched on the electric light, I saw that the door was fast shut and bolted. Through the porthole when I had drawn the curtain I could discern the rocky shores of the fiord, the rivers of ice and the lofty pinnacles. It was night and yet day, for the sun does not set in the Arctic circle when the month is May. The warm, wan light did but little to cheer me, and I lay back upon my pillow and fell to sleep in earnest.
Now comes the more wonderful thing. From my sleep was I waked a second time to find the warm sunlight flooding my room, and yet my body as cold as though it were swathed in ice. Opening my eyes as one waked from a dream, I saw the hunchback of Dolphin's Cave as plainly as ever I saw anything in all my life. There he stood crouching over the bed, a wild, uncouth figure of a man who would jibber a story if he could, but had not the power of speech to tell it. On my side was the stupor of lingering sleep, blank disbelief in what I saw and the disposition to name it a nightmare. If I came to do otherwise, it was the quickness of the man himself which recalled me to sense. A sound of stirring on the deck, the footfall of the watch, and the fellow had gone in a flash, slipping like an eel through the open port and so being hidden instantly from sight.
Well, I was staggered, to be sure, and utterly confounded. I saw that I had not feared the man, and that was the truth; but curiosity remained, and kneeling upon my bed (for we have beds in the private cabins of the Celsis) I went to peer through the port after him—but this was the moment when I saw another man on the floor and understood in a flash what had happened. There had been two in my cabin and one lay dead, so close to me that I could have touched him with my hand. When I looked at him again, I saw that he had been stabbed through the heart; and all the horror of his waxen face and hanging jaw and staring eyes getting the better of me, I ran wildly from the place, and never ceased to run until the door of the Captain's cabin was shut behind me and every word of the story told.
"It would be Bill Fairway," says he, drawing on his clothes as he could. I told him that Fairway was the man.
"Then," says he, "but for God's Providence, you'd have been a dead man this night. And it was the hunchback, you say? Surely, sir, we are in the presence of some great mystery."
I said that it must be so,