We can eat our shoes if worse comes to worst, but we couldn’t drink ‘em.”
As he spoke Wilson had been boring a hole in one of the water kegs, and as Spider held a tin cup he tilted the keg to pour a draft of the precious fluid. A thin stream of blackish, dry particles filtered slowly through the tiny aperture into the bottom of the cup. With a groan Wilson dropped the keg, and sat staring at the dry stuff in the cup, speechless with horror.
“The kegs are filled with gunpowder,” said Spider, in a low tone, turning to those aft. And so it proved when the last had been opened.
“Coal oil and gunpowder!” cried Monsieur Thuran. “SAPRISTI! What a diet for shipwrecked mariners!”
With the full knowledge that there was neither food nor water on board, the pangs of hunger and thirst became immediately aggravated, and so on the first day of their tragic adventure real suffering commenced in grim earnest, and the full horrors of shipwreck were upon them.
As the days passed conditions became horrible. Aching eyes scanned the horizon day and night until the weak and weary watchers would sink exhausted to the bottom of the boat, and there wrest in dream-disturbed slumber a moment’s respite from the horrors of the waking reality.
The sailors, goaded by the remorseless pangs of hunger, had eaten their leather belts, their shoes, the sweatbands from their caps, although both Clayton and Monsieur Thuran had done their best to convince them that these would only add to the suffering they were enduring.
Weak and hopeless, the entire party lay beneath the pitiless tropic sun, with parched lips and swollen tongues, waiting for the death they were beginning to crave. The intense suffering of the first few days had become deadened for the three passengers who had eaten nothing, but the agony of the sailors was pitiful, as their weak and impoverished stomachs attempted to cope with the bits of leather with which they had filled them. Tompkins was the first to succumb. Just a week from the day the Lady Alice went down the sailor died horribly in frightful convulsions.
For hours his contorted and hideous features lay grinning back at those in the stern of the little boat, until Jane Porter could endure the sight no longer. “Can you not drop his body overboard, William?” she asked.
Clayton rose and staggered toward the corpse. The two remaining sailors eyed him with a strange, baleful light in their sunken orbs. Futilely the Englishman tried to lift the corpse over the side of the boat, but his strength was not equal to the task.
“Lend me a hand here, please,” he said to Wilson, who lay nearest him.
“Wot do you want to throw ‘im over for?” questioned the sailor, in a querulous voice.
“We’ve got to before we’re too weak to do it,” replied Clayton. “He’d be awful by tomorrow, after a day under that broiling sun.”
“Better leave well enough alone,” grumbled Wilson. “We may need him before tomorrow.”
Slowly the meaning of the man’s words percolated into Clayton’s understanding. At last he realized the fellow’s reason for objecting to the disposal of the dead man.
“God!” whispered Clayton, in a horrified tone. “You don’t mean—”
“W’y not?” growled Wilson. “Ain’t we gotta live? He’s dead,” he added, jerking his thumb in the direction of the corpse. “He won’t care.”
“Come here, Thuran,” said Clayton, turning toward the Russian. “We’ll have something worse than death aboard us if we don’t get rid of this body before dark.”
Wilson staggered up menacingly to prevent the contemplated act, but when his comrade, Spider, took sides with Clayton and Monsieur Thuran he gave up, and sat eying the corpse hungrily as the three men, by combining their efforts, succeeded in rolling it overboard.
All the balance of the day Wilson sat glaring at Clayton, in his eyes the gleam of insanity. Toward evening, as the sun was sinking into the sea, he commenced to chuckle and mumble to himself, but his eyes never left Clayton.
After it became quite dark Clayton could still feel those terrible eyes upon him. He dared not sleep, and yet so exhausted was he that it was a constant fight to retain consciousness. After what seemed an eternity of suffering his head dropped upon a thwart, and he slept. How long he was unconscious he did not know—he was awakened by a shuffling noise quite close to him. The moon had risen, and as he opened his startled eyes he saw Wilson creeping stealthily toward him, his mouth open and his swollen tongue hanging out.
The slight noise had awakened Jane Porter at the same time, and as she saw the hideous tableau she gave a shrill cry of alarm, and at the same instant the sailor lurched forward and fell upon Clayton. Like a wild beast his teeth sought the throat of his intended prey, but Clayton, weak though he was, still found sufficient strength to hold the maniac’s mouth from him.
At Jane Porter’s scream Monsieur Thuran and Spider awoke. On seeing the cause of her alarm, both men crawled to Clayton’s rescue, and between the three of them were able to subdue Wilson and hurl him to the bottom of the boat. For a few minutes he lay there chattering and laughing, and then, with an awful scream, and before any of his companions could prevent, he staggered to his feet and leaped overboard.
The reaction from the terrific strain of excitement left the weak survivors trembling and prostrated. Spider broke down and wept; Jane Porter prayed; Clayton swore softly to himself; Monsieur Thuran sat with his head in his hands, thinking. The result of his cogitation developed the following morning in a proposition he made to Spider and Clayton.
“Gentlemen,” said Monsieur Thuran, “you see the fate that awaits us all unless we are picked up within a day or two. That there is little hope of that is evidenced by the fact that during all the days we have drifted we have seen no sail, nor the faintest smudge of smoke upon the horizon.
“There might be a chance if we had food, but without food there is none. There remains for us, then, but one of two alternatives, and we must choose at once. Either we must all die together within a few days, or one must be sacrificed that the others may live. Do you quite clearly grasp my meaning?”
Jane Porter, who had overheard, was horrified. If the proposition had come from the poor, ignorant sailor, she might possibly have not been so surprised; but that it should come from one who posed as a man of culture and refinement, from a gentleman, she could scarcely credit.
“It is better that we die together, then,” said Clayton.
“That is for the majority to decide,” replied Monsieur Thuran. “As only one of us three will be the object of sacrifice, we shall decide. Miss Porter is not interested, since she will be in no danger.”
“How shall we know who is to be first?” asked Spider.
“It may be fairly fixed by lot,” replied Monsieur Thuran. “I have a number of franc pieces in my pocket. We can choose a certain date from among them—the one to draw this date first from beneath a piece of cloth will be the first.”
“I shall have nothing to do with any such diabolical plan,” muttered Clayton; “even yet land may be sighted or a ship appear—in time.”
“You will do as the majority decide, or you will be ‘the first’ without the formality of drawing lots,” said Monsieur Thuran threateningly. “Come, let us vote on the plan; I for one am in favor of it. How about you, Spider?”
