The House Under the Sea Part 11

He agreed to that with one of those expressive nods which spared him a deal of talk. By-and-bye, without referring to the matter any more, he turned suddenly to Peter Bligh and exclaimed:

"Halloa, my man, and what's the matter with you?"

Now, Peter Bligh sat up as stiff as a board and answered directly.

"Hunger, doctor, that's the matter with me! If you'll add thirst to it, you've about named my complaint."

"Fog out of your lungs, eh?"

"Be sure and it is. I could dance at a fair and not be particular about the women. Put me alongside a beef-steak and you shall see some love-making. Aye, doctor, I'll never get my bread as a living skeleton, the saints be good to me, my hold's too big for that!"

It was like Mister Bligh, and amused the stranger very much. Just as if to answer Peter, the doctor crossed the room and opened a big cupboard by the window, which I saw to be full of victuals.

"I forget to eat, myself, when the instruments hustle me," said he, thoughtfully; "that's a bad habit, anyway. Suppose you display your energy by setting supper. There are tinned things here and eggs, I believe. You'll find firewood and fresh meat in the kitchen yonder.

Here's something to keep the fog out of your lungs while you get it."

[Ill.u.s.tation: We were all sitting at the supper-table.]

He tossed a respirator across the table, and Peter Bligh was away to the kitchen before you could count two. It was a relief to have something to do, and right quickly our fellows did it. We were all (except little Dolly Venn, who wanted his strength yet) sitting at the supper table when half an hour had pa.s.sed and eating like men who had fasted for a month. To-morrow troubled the seamen but little. It did not trouble Peter Bligh or Seth Barker that night, I witness.

A strange scene, you will admit, and one not readily banished from the memory. For my part, I see that room, I see that picture many a time in the night watches on my ship or in the dreaming moments of a seaman's day. The great machines of gla.s.s and bra.s.s rise up again about me as they rose that night. I watch the face of the American doctor, sharp and clear-cut and boyish, with the one black curl across the forehead.

I see Peter Bligh bent double over the table, little Dolly Venn's eyes looking up bravely at me as he tries to tell us that all is well with him. The same curious sensations of doubt and uncertainty come again to plague me. What escape was there from that place? What escape from the island? Who was to help us in our plight? Who was to befriend little Ruth b.e.l.l.e.n.den now? Would the ship ever come back? Was she above or below the sea? Would the sleep-time endure long, and should we live through it? Ah! that was the thing to ask them. More especially to ask this clever man, whose work I made sure it was to answer the question.

"We thank you, doctor," I said to him, at one time; "we owe our lives to you this night. We sha'n't forget that, be sure of it."

"I'll never eat a full meal again but I'll remember the name of Doctor--Doctor--which reminds me that I don't know your name, sir,"

added Peter Bligh, clumsily. The doctor smiled at his humour.

"Dr. Duncan Gray, if it's anything to remember. Ask for Duncan Gray, of Chicago, and one man in a thousand will tell you that he makes it his business to write about poisons, not knowing anything of them. Why, yes, poison brought me here and poison will move me on again; at least I begin to imagine it. Poison, you see, holds the aces."

"It's a fearsome place, truly," said I, "and wonderful that Europe knows so little about it. I've seen Ken's Island on the charts any time these fifteen years, but never a whisper have I heard of sleep-time or sun-time or any other death-talk such as I've heard these last three days. You'll be here, doctor, no doubt, to ascertain the truth of it?

If my common sense did not tell me as much, the machinery would. It's a great thing to be a man of your kind, and I'd give much if my education had led me that way. But I was only at a country grammar school, and what I couldn't get in at one end the master never could at the other.

Aye, I'd give much to know what you know this night!"

He smiled a little queerly at the compliment, I thought, and turned it off with a word.

"I begin to know how little I know, and that's a good start," said he.

"Possibly Ken's Island will make that little less. The master of Ken's Island is generously sending me to Nature's university. I think that I understand why he permitted me to come here. Why, yes, it was smart, and the man who first set curiosity going about Prince Czerny in Chicago is well out of Prince Czerny's way. I must reckon all this up, Captain--Captain----"

"Jasper Begg," said I, "at one time master of Ruth b.e.l.l.e.n.den's yacht, the Manhattan."

"And Peter Bligh, his mate, who is a Christian man when the victuals are right."

Seth Barker said nothing, but I named him and spoke about Dolly Venn.

We five, I think, began to know each other better from that time, and to fall together as comrades in a common misfortune. Parlous as our plight was, we had food and drink and tobacco for our pipes afterwards; and a seaman needs little more than that to make him happy. Indeed, we should have pa.s.sed the night well enough, forgetting all that had gone before and must come after, but for a weird reminder at the hour of midnight, which compelled us to recollect our strange situation and all that it betided.

Comfortable we were, I say, for Dr. Gray had found fine berths for us all: Dolly on the sofa, his skipper in an arm-chair, Peter Bligh and Seth Barker on rugs by the window, and he himself in a hammock slung across the kitchen door. We had said "good-night" to one another and were settling off to sleep, when there came a weird, wild calf from the grounds without; and so dismal was it and so like the cries of men in agony that we all sprang to our feet and stood, with every faculty waking, to listen to the horrible outcry. For a moment no man moved, so full of terror were those sounds; but the doctor, coming first to his senses, strode towards the window and pulled the heavy curtain back from it. Then, in the dazzling light, that wonderful gold-blue light which hovered in mist-clouds about the gardens of the bungalow, I saw a spectacle which froze my very blood. Twenty men and women, perhaps, some of them Europeans, some natives, some dressed in seamen's dress, some in rags, some quite naked, were dancing a wild, fantastic, maddening dance which no foaming Dervish could have surpa.s.sed, aye, or imitated, in his cruellest moments. Whirling round and round, extending their arms to the sky, sometimes casting themselves headlong on the ground, biting the earth with savage lips, tearing their flesh with knives, one or two falling stone-dead before our very eyes, these poor people in their delirium cried like animals, and filled the whole woods with their melancholic wailing. For ten minutes, it may be, the fit endured; then one by one they sank to the earth in the most fearful contortions of limb and face and body, and, a great silence coming upon the house, we saw them there in that cold, clear light, outposts of the death which Ken's Island harboured.

We saw the thing, we knew its dreadful truth, yet many minutes pa.s.sed before one among us opened his lip. The spell was still on us--a spell of dread and fear I pray that few men may know.

"The laughing fever," exclaimed the doctor, at last, letting the curtain fall back with trembling hand. "Yes, I have heard of that somewhere."

And then he said, pointing to the lamp upon the table:

"Three days, my friends, three days between us and that!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE STORM

You have been informed that Dr. Gray promised us three days' security in the bungalow, and I will now tell you how it came about that we quitted the house next morning, and set out anew upon the strangest errand of them all.

There's an old saying among seamen that the higher the storm the deeper the sleep, and this, may-be, is true, if you speak of a ship and of an English crew upon her. It takes something more than a capful of wind to blow sleep from a sailor's eyes; and though you were to tell him that the Judgment was for to-morrow, I do believe he would take his four hours off all the same. But at Ken's Island things went differently; and two, at least, of our party knew little sleep that night. Again and again I turned on my bed to see Dr. Gray busy before his furnace and to hear Peter Bligh snoring as though he'd crack the window-gla.s.s.

Nevertheless, sleep came to me slowly, and when I slept I dreamed of the island and all the strange things which had happened there since first we set foot upon it. Many sounds and shapes were present in my dream, and the sweet figure of Ruth b.e.l.l.e.n.den with them all. I saw her brave and patient in the gardens of the bungalow; the words which she had spoken, "For G.o.d's sake come back to me!" troubled my ears like the music of the sea. Sometimes, as dreams will, the picture was but a vague shadow, and would send me hither and thither, now to the high seas and an English port, again to the island and the bay wherein I first landed. I remember, more than all, a dream which carried me to the water's edge, with my hand in hers, and showed me a great storm and inky clouds looming above the reef and the lightning playing vividly, and a tide rising so swiftly that it threatened to engulf us and flood the very land on which we stood. And then I awoke, and the dawn-light was in the room and Dr. Gray himself stood watching by the window.

"Yes," he said, as though answering some remark of mine, "we shall have a storm--and soon."

"You do not say so!" cried I; "why, that's my dream! I must have heard the thunder in my sleep."

He drew the curtain back to show me the angry sky, which gave promise of thunder and of a hurricane to follow; the air of the room seemed heavy as that of a prison-house. In the gardens outside a shimmer of yellow light reminded me of a London fog as once I breathed it by Temple Bar. No longer could you distinguish the trees or the bushes or even the ma.s.s of the woods beyond the gate. From time to time the loom of the cloud would lift, and a beam of sunlight strike through it, revealing a golden path and a bewitching vision of gra.s.s and roses all drooping in the heat. Then the ray was lost again, and the yellow vapour steamed up anew.

"A storm undoubtedly," said the doctor, at last, "and a bad one, too.

We should learn something from this, captain. Why, yes, it looks easy--after the storm the wind."

"And the wind will clear Ken's Island of fog," cried I. "Ah, of course, it will. We shall breathe just now and go about like sane men. I am younger for hearing it, doctor."

He said, "Yes, it was good news," and then put some sticks into the grate and began to make a fire. The others still slept heavily. Little Dolly Venn muttered in his sleep a name I thought I had heard before, and, truth to tell, it was something like "Rosamunda." The doctor himself was as busy as a housemaid.

"Yes," he continued, presently, "we should be pretty well through with the sleep-time, and after that, waking. Does anything occur to you?"

I sat up in the chair and looked at him closely. His own manner of speech was catching.

"Why, yes," said I, "something does occur. For one thing, we may have company."

He lit a match and watched the wood blazing up the chimney. A bit of fire is always a cheerful thing, and it did me good to see it that morning.

"Czerny has more than a hundred men," said he, after some reflection.

"We are four and one, which makes five; five exactly."

Now, this was the first time he had confessed to anything which might let a man know where his sympathies lay. Friend or enemy, yesterday taught me nothing about him. I learnt afterwards that he had once known Kenrick b.e.l.l.e.n.den in Philadelphia. I think he was glad to have four comrades with him on Ken's Island.

"If you mean thereby, doctor, that you'd join us," was my reply, "you couldn't tell me better news. You know why I came here and you know why I stay. It may mean much to Mme. Czerny to have such a friend as you.

What can be done by five men on this cursed sh.o.r.e shall be done, I swear; but I am glad that you are with us--very glad."

I really meant it, and spoke from my heart: but he was not a demonstrative man, and he rarely answered one directly as one might have wished. On this occasion, I remember, he went about his work for a little while before he spoke again; and it was not until the coffee was boiling on the hob that he came across to me and, seating himself on the arm of my chair, asked, abruptly: