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In the Sargasso Sea: A Novel, a novel by Thomas A. Janvier |
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Chapter 14. Of My Meeting With A Murdered Man |
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_ CHAPTER XIV. OF MY MEETING WITH A MURDERED MAN Robinson Crusoe's footprint in the sand did not startle him more than that strange lonely cry startled me. Indeed, as between the two of us, I had rather the worse of it: for Crusoe, at least, knew that he was dealing with a reality, while I could not be certain that I was not dealing with a bit of a dream in which there was no reality at all. For a long while I sat there puzzling over it--half hoping that I might hear it again, and so be sure of it; and half hoping that I might not hear it, because of the thrilling tone in it which had filled me with a sharp alarm. I was so shaken that I had not the courage to go off to my berth in the cabin, with only a candle to light me there, but stayed on in the little room that the lamp lighted so brightly that there were no dark corners for my fancy to people with things horrible; and so, at last, still scared and puzzled, I went off to sleep in my chair. When I woke again the lamp had burned out and had filled the place with a vile smell of lamp-smoke that set me to sneezing. But I did not mind that much; for daylight had come, and my nerves were both quieted by sleep and steadied by that confident courage which most men feel--no matter how tight a fix they may be in--when they have the backing of the sun. My first thought was to get on deck and have a look about me; the feeling being strong in my mind that on one or another of the near-by wrecks I should find the man who had uttered that thrilling cry, and would find him in some trouble that I might be able to help him out of. But my second thought, and it was the wiser, was to eat first of all a good breakfast and so get strength in me that would make me ready to face whatever might come along--for a vague dread hung by me that I was in the way of danger, and whatever it might be I knew that I could the better stand up against it after a hearty meal. Therefore I got out another tin of meat and ate the whole of it, and a hunk of stale bread along with it, and washed down my breakfast with a bottle of beer--longing greatly for a cup of coffee in place of the beer, but being in too much of a hurry to stop for that while I made a fire. As the food got inside of me--though in that smoky and smelly place eating it was not much of a pleasure--my thoughts took a more cheerful turn. The hope of meeting a live man to talk to and to help me out of my utter loneliness rose strong in my mind; and I felt that no matter who or what he might be--even a man in desperate sickness and pain, whom I must nurse and care for--finding him in that solitude would make my own case less sad. And so, when I went on deck, my longing hope for companionship was the strongest feeling in my heart. With my first glance around I saw that during the night my hulk had made more progress than I had counted on; having moved the faster, I suppose, as it felt more strongly the pull of the mass of floatage near by. Be this as it may, I found myself so close alongside the big cargo-boat that a good jump would carry me aboard of her; and I was so eager to begin my investigations that I took the jump without a single moment of delay. And being come to her deck, the first thing that I saw there was a dead man lying in the middle of it with a pool of still fresh blood staining the planks by his side. I never had seen anything like that, and as I looked at the dead man--he was a big strong coarse fellow, dressed in a pair of dirty sail-cloth trousers and in a dirty checked shirt--I went so queasy and giddy that I had to step back a little and lean for a while against the steamer's rail. It was clear enough that he had died fighting. His face had a bad cut on it and there was another on his neck, and his hands were cut cruelly, as though he had caught again and again at a sharp knife in trying to keep it away from him; but the stab that had finished him was in his breast, showing ghastly as he lay on his back with his shirt open--and no doubt it was as the knife went into him there that he had uttered the cry of mortal agony which had come to me through the darkness, with so thrilling a note in it, while I was sitting in bright comfort drowsily smoking my cigar. And then, as I remembered my drowsiness, for a moment I seemed to get back into it--and I had a half hope that perhaps what I was looking at was only a part of a horrible dream. Had there been any sign of a living man about, of the murderer as well as the murdered, I should have been less broken by what I saw; for then I should have had something practical to attend to--either in bringing the other man to book on the poor dead fellow's account, or in fighting him on my own. But the nearest thing to life in sight, on that storm-swept hulk under the low-hanging golden haze, was the rough body out of which life had but just gone forever; and the bloody stains everywhere on the deck showing that he and another must have been fighting pretty much all over it before they got to an end. And the horror of it all was the stronger because of the awful and hopeless loneliness: with the dead-still weed-covered ocean stretching away to the horizon on the one hand, and on the other only dead ships tangled and crushed together going off in a desolate wilderness that grew fainter--but for its faintness all the more despairing--until it was lost in the dun-gold murky thickness of the haze. As I got steadier, in a little while, I realized that I must hunt up the other man, the one who had done the killing, and have things out with him. Pretty certainly, his disposition would be to try to kill me; and if I were to have a fight on hand as soon as I fell in with him it was plain that my chances would be all the better for downing him could I take him by surprise. I would have given a good deal just then for a knife, and a good deal more for a pistol; but the best that I could do to arm myself was to take an iron belaying-pin from the rail, and with this in my hand I walked aft to the companion-way --feeling sure that my best chance of coming upon my man unexpectedly was to find him asleep in the cabin below. And then, suddenly, the very uncomfortable thought came to me that there might be more than one man down there--with the likelihood that if I roused them they all would set upon me together and finish me quickly; and this brought me to a halt just within the companion-way, in the shadowy place at the head of the cabin stair. I stood there for a minute or two listening closely, but I heard no sound whatever from below; and presently the dead silence made me feel rather ashamed of myself for being so easily scared. And then I noticed, my eyes having become accustomed to the shadow, that there was a splash of blood on the top step and more blood on the steps lower down--as though a man badly hurt, and without any one to help him, had gone down the stair slowly and had rested on almost every step and bled for a while before he could go on; and seeing this made it seem likely to me that I would have but a single man to deal with, and he in such a state that I need not fear him much. But for all that I kept a tight grip on my belaying-pin, and held it in such a way that I could use it easily, as I put my foot on the first of the bloody steps and so went on down. The cabin, when I got to it, was but a small one--the boat not being built to carry passengers--and so dusky that I could not make it out well; for the skylight was covered with a tarpaulin--put there, I suppose, to protect it when the gale came on that the steamer was wrecked in--and all the light there was came in from one corner where the covering had fetched away. It gave me a sort of shivering feeling when I looked into that dusky place, where I saw nothing clearly and where there was at least a chance that in another moment I might be fighting for my life. I stood in the doorway, gripping my belaying-pin, until I began to see more clearly--making out that a small fixed table, with a water-jug and some bottles and glasses on it, filled a half of the cabin, and that three state-room doors--one of which stood open--were ranged on each of its sides. And then, just as I was about to enter, I fairly jumped as there came to me softly through the silence a low sad sound that was between a groan and a sigh. But in an instant my reason told me that this was not the sort of sound to come from a man whom I need be afraid of; and as it came plainly enough from the state-room of which the door stood open I stepped briskly over there and looked inside. _ |
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