ed no more; Amalu had vanished unobserved.
Carthew was the last afoot: he stood swaying at the break of the poop,
and the lantern, which he still carried, swung with his movement. His
head hummed; it swarmed with broken thoughts; memory of that day's
abominations flared up and died down within him like the light of a lamp
in a strong draught. And then he had a drunkard's inspiration.

"There must be no more of this," he thought, and stumbled once more
below.

The absence of Holdorsen's body brought him to a stand. He stood and
stared at the empty floor, and then remembered and smiled. From the
captain's room he took the open case with one dozen and three bottles of
gin, put the lantern inside, and walked precariously forth. Mac was once
more conscious, his eyes haggard, his face drawn with pain and flushed
with fever; and Carthew remembered he had never been seen to, had lain
there helpless, and was so to lie all night, injured, perhaps dying. But
it was now too late; reason had now fled from that silent ship. If
Carthew could get on deck again, it was as much as he could hope; and
casting on the unfortunate a glance of pity, the tragic drunkard
shouldered his way up the companion, dropped the case overboard, and
fell in the scuppers helpless.

CHAPTER XXV

A BAD BARGAIN

With the first colour in the east, Carthew awoke and sat up. A while he
gazed at the scroll of the morning bank and the spars and hanging canvas
of the brig, like a man who wakes in a strange bed, with a child's
simplicity of wonder. He wondered above all what ailed him, what he had
lost, what disfavour had been done him, which he knew he should resent,
yet had forgotten. And then, like a river bursting through a dam, the
truth rolled on him its instantaneous volume: his memory teemed with
speech and pictures that he should never again forget; and he sprang to
his feet, stood a moment hand to brow, and began to walk violently to
and fro by the companion. As he walked he wrung his hands.
"God--God--God," he kept saying, with no thought of prayer, uttering a
mere voice of agony.

The time may have been long or short, it was perhaps minutes, perhaps
only seconds, ere he awoke to find himself observed, and saw the captain
sitting up and watching him over the break of the poop, a strange
blindness as of fever in his eyes, a haggard knot of corrugations on his
brow. Cain saw himself in a mirror. For a flash they looked upon each
other, and th