“Well?” asked Jacob Flint. “When does the game begin?”
“The game is just started,” said Hall, “an’ the sun will do the rest. I’ve cut off his eyelids!”
They stared a moment in amazement, and then an understanding broke on them. Every tribe of savages in the world has been accredited with this ingenious torture which blinded their victim and usually drove him mad. The sun was now climbing the sky rapidly, and already fell on the face of the mate. The tropic sun which scorches and burns the toughest of skins was now directed full on the pupils of his eyes.
The sailors sought comfortable positions and waited for a long exhibition of pain, but they were mistaken. The torture acted far more quickly than even the whip. There was no outcry. Not once during his struggles did Van Roos make a sound from his throat, save for a quick, heavy panting. Perhaps by contrast with the yells of Borgson, which were still in the ears of the men, this silence was more horrible than the most throat-filling shrieks. They could see Van Roos twisting his head ceaselessly and vainly to escape that blinding light. His ruddy face became swollen like the features of a drowned man. And that was all that happened—only that, and the panting, the quick, choppy panting like a running man. Finally one of the sailors rose with a mallet in his hand.
“Where you goin’?” asked Hall ominously.
“Going to finish him.”
Hall caught the fellow’s arm.
“Listen!” he whispered, and such was the silence that the hoarse whisper was audible all over the deck. “Don’t you hear?”
And with one hand he kept beat for the quick breaths of the tortured man. At that moment there was a long sigh, and the breathing stopped. Hall strode angrily forward to his victim, but when he reached the hatch, Van Roos was dead. A blood vessel must have burst in his brain, and death was as instantaneous as though a bullet had struck him. So they cut him free, and his body followed that of Borgson over the rail. Then the eyes of the mutineers turned aft toward the wireless house, and then back upon Campbell. Six victims remained. One of the firemen slipped close to Hovey on naked feet. He did not speak, but his long, thin arm pointed toward the engineer.
“Not yet,” said Hovey, “not yet! Tomorrow if he doesn’t give in, we’ll turn you loose on him.”
The fireman grinned and went back on noiseless feet to his companions to spread the good tidings. Hovey approached the wireless house.
“We’ve got one show left to offer, but we’re savin’ it till tomorrow,” he said. “So brace up, hearties, and keep cheer. You’ll see Campbell go a way worse than either of these tomorrow.”
“Wait,” called Harrigan, suddenly roused. “D’you mean to say that you’d try your hellwork on a kind man like Campbell?”
“A kind man like Campbell?” echoed Hovey, and then laughed. “A kind man?”
And he retreated with no other answer, and left the fugitives aft to the merciless, sweltering heat of the sun. By the time the sun went down, they were so fevered by the need of water that they had not the strength to bless the cool falling of the dark; they still carried the fire of the sunlight in their blood.
CHAPTER 36
“This man Campbell,” said Harrigan, “he’s a true man, McTee, and he stood up to White Henshaw for my sake—for the sake of me and his Bobbie Burns. They plan to take him to hell tomorrow, Angus, and I’ve an idea that there’s one chance in the thousand that I could steal in on the dogs tonight and bring him back with me.”
“Can they do anything worse to him than they’re doing to us?”
“Maybe not, but my heart would lie easier, McTee. I’ll wait for the fever o’ the sun to go out of me head an’ for the crew to get drunk an’ a little drunker.”
So they waited while the noise of the nightly carousal waxed high and higher, and then died away by slow degrees. At length Harrigan stood up, gripped the hand of McTee in silent farewell, heard a whispered “Good luck!” and slipped noiselessly down the ladder and started across the deck in the shadow of the rail. From any portion of the main cabin eyes might be watching him; there was only the one chance in ten that the lookout whom Hovey had certainly stationed would not perceive him as he crept along under the shadow. Accordingly he went blindly forward.
If the lookout saw him, at least there was no outcry, no general alarm. He stood flat against the wall of the main cabin at length and rehearsed a plan, listening the while to the lapping of the waves against the side of the ship. Then he stole step by step up the ladder to the upper deck. His head was already above the ladder when he heard the light padding of a bare foot and saw a figure around the corner of the cabin.
Harrigan ducked out of sight and clung to the iron rounds ready to leap up and strike if the sailor should descend the ladder, though in that case the alarm would be given and his errand spoiled; but the sailor was apparently the lookout set there by Hovey. He stayed at the head of the ladder a moment, humming to himself, and then turned and walked on his beat to the other side of the ship. Harrigan slipped onto the deck and ran noiselessly to the side of the cabin. Here he flattened himself against the wall until the sentinel had again made the turn of his beat, and as the latter moved dimly out of sight through the darkness, the Irishman stole down the deck toward the forward cabins.
The first two windows showed dark and empty; if there were anyone inside, he must be asleep in the drunken torpor into which most of the crew seemed to have fallen. The door of the third room, formerly occupied by the second mate, stood ajar, and here by the dull light of an oil lantern, he saw Campbell tied hand and foot to a chair. He was placed close to a little table whereon sat a bottle of whisky, a siphon of seltzer, a tall glass, meat, bread, water—everything, in fact, with which the senses of the starving man could be tormented. And near him, sitting with elbows spread out on the edge of the table, was one of the firemen, grinning continually as if he had just heard some monstrous joke. The expression of Campbell was just as fixed, for his small eyes shifted eagerly, swiftly, from the food to the water, and back again.
The fireman—the same tall, gaunt fellow who had demanded that Hovey turn over Campbell to him and his companions that day—now leaned forward and raised a dipper of water from a bucket which sat on the floor, and allowed it to trickle back, splashing with what seemed to Harrigan the sweetest music in the world. Hovey must have taught him that trick, and its effect upon Campbell was worse than the beating of the whips. The fireman let his head roll loosely back as he laughed, and while his head was still back and his eyes squinting shut in the ecstasy of his delight, Harrigan leaped from the shadow of the door and struck at the throat—at the great Adam’s apple which shook with the laughter. The blow must have nearly broken the man’s neck. His head jerked forward with a whistling gasp of breath, and as he reached for the knife on the table, Harrigan struck again, this time just behind the ear. The man slid from his chair to the floor and lay in a queer heap—as if all the bones in his body were broken.
“Harrigan! Harrigan! Harrigan!” Campbell was whispering over and over, but still his eyes held like those of a starved wolf on the food. The moment his ropes were cut, he buried his teeth in the great chunk of roasted meat.
Harrigan jerked him away and held him by main force.
“Be a man!” he whispered. “We’ve got to take this food and this water back to the wireless house—if we can get there with it. Take hold of yourself, Campbell!”
The engineer nodded. Voices came close down the deck; instantly Harrigan jerked up the glass globe which protected the lantern’s flame and blew out the light. They crouched shoulder to shoulder.
“I thought he was in here,” said a voice at the door.
“He was,” answered Hovey’s voice, “but I guess they took him below— they said it was too cool for him up there. Ha, ha, ha!”
Their steps disappeared down the deck. After that Harrigan dared not show a light