You may
stray over that way, as if you were after nothing particular. It'll do
no harm to try."

"I'll see if I can hook it then," responded the other. "What if I try
now?"

"The sooner the better. With the knife in our possession, we'll know
better how to act. Get it, if you can."

The last speaker remained in his place. The other, rising into an erect
attitude, stepped apart from his fellow-conspirator, and moved away from
the mast,--going apparently without any design. This, however, led him
towards the empty rum-cask,--alongside of which the Irishman lay asleep,
utterly unconscious of his approach.

CHAPTER SEVENTY EIGHT.

A FOUL DEED DONE IN A FOG.

It is scarce necessary to tell who were the two men who had been thus
plotting in whispers. The first speaker was, of course, the Frenchman,
Le Gros,--the other being the confederate who had assisted him in the
performance of his unfair trick in the lot-casting.

Their demoniac design is already known from their conversation,--nothing
more nor less than to murder O'Gorman in his sleep!

The former had two motives prompting him to this horrid crime,--either
sufficiently strong to sway such a nature as his to its execution. He
had all along felt hostility to the Irishman,--which the events of that
day had rendered both deep and deadly. He was wicked enough to have
killed his antagonist for that alone. But there was the other motive,
more powerful and far more rational to influence him to the act. As
above stated, it had been finally arranged that the suspended fight was
to be finished by the earliest light of the morning. Le Gros knew that
the next scene in that drama of death was to be the last; and, judging
from his experience of the one already played, he felt keenly
apprehensive as to the result. He had been fully aware, before the
curtain fell upon the first act, that his life could then have been
taken; and, conscious of a certain inferiority to his antagonist, he now
felt cowed, and dreaded the final encounter.

To avoid it, he was willing to do anything, however mean or wicked,--
ready to commit even the crime of murder!

He knew that if he should succeed in destroying his adversary,--so long
as the act was not witnessed by their associates,--so long as there
should be only circumstantial evidence against him,--he would not have
much to fear from such judges as they. It was simply a question as to
whether the deed could be done sil