The Great Secret/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE CAPTAIN'S GIG.
Dennis MacBride had done his best to provide for the necessities of the three remaining Anarchists with the short time at his disposal before the abandonment of the schooner. He had seized up and slung into the boat a cask of water. They had several bottles of spirits, a case of biscuits, and as many tins as he could lay hold of, in the hurry, of preserved meat; and that was all.
They had been now on the waste of waters twenty days without seeing a sail or a vision of land, and their limited stock of stores was exhausted, all except two bottles of rum. They had studied the strictest economy, limiting themselves to one biscuit per day, with one drink of the brackish water, qualified with the spirits and helped along with a flavouring of the preserved meat, suffering all the time inordinate pangs of hunger and thirst, with the fierce sun beating mercilessly upon them, and the pitiless glaring of that blue ocean.
The briny ozone, so health-producing and appetising to invalids who have plenty on shore, added to the intensity of their sufferings with this strictly enforced abstinence. They had endured during these twenty days a hell of agony, which the starvation diet and limited drink only intensified.
Often had they been inclined to say "Let us eat, drink and die"; but the desire to escape helped them to overcome that mad craving of nature. Yet they seemed no nearer escape, and the provisions were exhausted. The last meat tin had been licked, the last biscuit munched, and the last drain of water emptied out. Now only the two bottles of fiery spirits remained, while the water-cask had opened and was like tinder inside and out.
They were all as attenuated as saints in the desert. The hair of the baroness had grown dry and grey, her cheeks were like parchment drawn tightly over the cheek bones with great hollows, her brown eyes were dim and quenched, and her arms, breasts and limbs, which she had once been so proud of, were shrunken and dry almost as those of an Egyptian mummy. So she lay at the bottom of the boat passive and hopeless, while the two men sat in the stern and sucked their thumbs in a wolfish manner.
The doctor was a skeleton; he had always been gentlemanly in his figure and slender, now he was like a ghoul, unwashed, with tangled beard and matted hair, and black eyes that glared with ravenous and hellish discontent out from fissures of bone.
Dennis had been fleshy and gross, he was now large-boned and ferocious, like the starved boar that he was, his little blue eyes blazing like sapphires set within rubies, his white and bushy eyebrows overhanging those angry caverns, the cheek bones protruding, and the stubbly red beard all bristly and horrible; added to these his fang-like teeth, blackened with tobacco chewing, that showed up, now that the contracted muscles of the upper lip had drawn it back in a beast-like snarl. A savage of prodigious strength still and ravenous desires, with his freckled skin, like the others, baked almost black with twenty days of neglect and tropical sunshine.
He was speaking in a husky and horrible whisper while the doctor listened.
"When the Indians are on the march, and grub becomes scarce, they tomahawk their women, and wolf them. She won't last long, and every day will dry her up more. What's the good of keeping her?"
The baroness had fawned upon, kissed and fondled this uncouth monster on the island, but he owed her no gratitude for that.
"She isn't half the bulk she was three days ago; she'll go most likely to-morrow, and then there won't be any moisture in her—it will be like chewing one's boots."
"You seem to know about these affairs," said the doctor.
"I have been lost at sea before, therefore, of course, I do know how they taste, if it is put off too long," replied Dennis huskily. "She won't be much good now, but to-morrow she'll be worse."
"Wait till night, comrade, and then you can do as you like with her; I don't care to take that kind of feast in daylight."
They sat together, and watched the thin figure of the woman at their feet, as a cat watches a canary, all through the afternoon. She did not move, but lay as if asleep, insensible to all as yet, for women develop patience and passivity in physical suffering. Delirium had not yet come on as it might to-morrow, yet, although suffering the pangs of the damned, she did not speak nor move; so had she lain for the past four days without moving.
How slow that fierce enemy of theirs, the sun, seemed to be in the withdrawing of its intolerable glare, which had been fixed upon them without surcease all the day, first on their backs, frizzling their spinal chords, then on their heads, baking their brains, and next on their breasts. Slicking the life-blood from their hearts. The white heat of morning and midday changed to the yellow flame of afternoon, soon to become like incandescent charcoal, red-hot and glowing.
Thus had they watched the pitiless avenger day after day, for they had been drawn back into the latitudes of calms. Its rising up, with what seemed to them mocking gaiety, like a cruel savage refreshed with sleep, and preparing for his day of slow torture by laughing gibes at his chained victims, then gathering intensity and strength as he warmed to his work, finally to sink back flushed and wearied with his unrelaxed vigil. This was how the sun in its different phases during the day appeared to them. They cursed it deeply and hopelessly while they waited for the coming of darkness.
They did not care how they drifted now, for they had no knowledge of where they were, no strength left to pull an oar, even if it had been worth while to pull, for where they lay they had as much prospect of being picked up, perhaps, as by moving about aimlessly. While they remained still, the hope still fed them that they might be in the right quarter for a passing steamship, whereas by roving they might only go out of the course, which was a maddening thought not be dwelt upon. They had neither sail, mast nor covering of any kind, so that even if the breezes came, they could not avail themselves of them; they were helpless, and must wait as they were.
Not a break on the wide spread of ultra-marine waters; yes, only a tiny, yet terribly significant, sign that they were not entirely isolated from other life, two black triangular objects lying parallel to each other, with a space of five feet between, like two little fishing buoys, constantly reminded them that the patient equatorial shark, the largest of all his tribe, was also watching for food when anything chanced to look that way. He was alone, with his little friend the pilot fish, darting to and fro, and reporting progress to him, but he never stirred from his position any more than did the small boat, with its sun-baked and shrunken boards, through the seams of which the water gurgled in, which Dennis had so frequently to bail out. That was the only effort that Dennis made, but the patient and watchful shark made none. He rested his huge bulk, just hidden all but those betraying fins, not ten feet distant from them, and he had remained in this juxtaposition for days, a grim sentinel that nothing could tire out. At night he was there still, for it was then that the boat made some drifting, which movement the watcher imitated. In the dark it was more terrible to look at than during the day, for as it moved the phosphorescent waters were stirred and lit up with blue flames, which revealed his vast proportions, and perhaps exaggerated them, to the horrified gaze of the spectators; any object passed through those waters seemed to set them ablaze, and leave a lurid trail behind it.
Heavy dews fell at night, for which they were thankful at the time, although afterwards in the early hours of the morning they sat drenched and shivering with cold, almost wishing for the torturing sun to rise and warm them before it began to scorch and blister. Yet the dews did them little good, for they only chilled their skins but did not slake their thirst, while it made their torment the next day all the more acute.
As yet they had been sparing on the spirits, for none of them had the vice of drunkenness added to their other vices; they had enough and to spare without this degradation. They knew also from past experience that the rum would not alleviate their sufferings, although it might terminate them the more rapidly when they had given up hope. As yet that stimulant of the soul had not quite left them, desperate as their present fortunes were.
They had for the past five nights varied their watching the movements of the shark by looking at the growing moon. It had come first a golden crescent upon the green space, now it would give them light enough for the fell work before them.
Slowly the sun went down in the west, while from the eastern horizon the incomplete moon rose and looked upon them as if with a backward glance, gradually gaining lustre as the daylight died out of the sky until they lay within the silver track of its reflection. The hour had come for the sacrifice of the woman.
"You know better than I do where to cut so as to get the most blood without any waste, doctor?" said Dennis, in a hoarse whisper.
"Yes," answered the doctor. "Where the weasel attacks is the best for that purpose, the jugular; one incision with my penknife will do that—but I am not going to kill her."
"No; I'll do that part of the job. My fist is still strong enough to fell some men and most women; one blow on her ear and she will be as dead as a rabbit."
As he spoke, the gaunt beast began to roll his shirt sleeves up, while the doctor looked away towards the triangular fins of the shark.
He felt Dennis move from his side and crawl over the prostrate baroness towards her head, for she now lay feet towards them on her back. She might have been already dead for all the motions she made as Dennis crawled weakly and stiffly over her. Then a pause came in the rocking of the boat, and next moment a sickening thud with the sound of crushing bones told him that the deed was done, and that their awful repast was ready.
"Come, doctor, do your part now," shouted Dennis in a cracked voice, and at the word the doctor rose up, and pulling out his penknife, opened the smaller blade and advanced to his task.
Man, in his civilized state, feels a much more sinful animal than does the primeval man, and remorse or conscience is a cultivated production entirely. The original cannibal, who has been born to the habit, has no after effects, unless it may be repletion from an over indulgence of the savoury food, which might produce a nightmare of horror, but that is all the horror that he suffers from. The rat, rabbit or cat may devour their own young at times, yet they appear to have no remorse for the unnatural offence, nor are they avoided or repudiated by their own kind. Life goes on the same with them as before. No madness seizes upon their brains; indeed, if anything, they appear to be supremely satisfied with their actions and. contented with the result.
The doctor had been accustomed most of his life to good cookery, and therefore, perhaps, a raw beefsteak would have given him, if he had not been so hard pressed, as much horror to contemplate as a raw baroness, yet the "devil drives when need drives." He had not tasted fluid for forty-eight hours and, like his comrade, he was desperate.
A peculiar sense of repugnance and loathing passed over him as he bared the throat of the dead woman, while he abhorred her with an intensity that was irresistible; then all at once those unworthy emotions towards that poor victim whom they had sacrificed to their necessities, passed from his mind, and a servile admiration took the place. Her breast was white and soft, if thin now, for with her sex's vanity she had protected it as well as she could from those sun glances. In the second glance which the scientist gave her she appeared to him as a beautiful martyr.
Then all at once the privation and wild-beast instinct woke up within him, the thirst and hunger-lust which holds man still the slave of the earth. He was a tiger and a fox combined. In an instant he had relapsed ages, when conscience was a sentiment unknown to man. The blue, round, snowy breasts did not appeal to his cultivated senses now, except as the child and the beast regard them, soft pillows to rest against while they suck.
"Who is to drink first, before I cut, comrade?"
Horrible words and awful title at such a time, with this dead and warm woman lying before these savages, ready, as woman ever is, to be the mother and feed her sons, natural and adopted, with her milk or with her blood. Oh, woman! who would not overlook your caprices and frailties when we think of your sacrifices and abrogations since the world began.
The mother lay before them, passive and ready to yield to their necessities, while the adopted sons faced each other.
"Let's draw lots, that's the fairest way," said Dennis.
"Yes," answered the doctor, and from his pocket he drew an envelope, frayed and dirty. Tearing off two pieces, one longer and the other shorter, he turned his back for a moment on his comrade, and arranged them, then he turned once more. "Draw!"
Dennis was lucky, he had first drink from that life fluid.
The two men knelt down together while the doctor made his incision in the thin throat, then he drew back and watched, with ravenous eyes, the moon, while his companion fastened his thirsty lips to the orifice and glutted himself from the still warm blood. After a time, which seemed to be an eternity to the waiting one, Dennis drew back with a sigh of infinite bliss and content, and straightway fell asleep by the side of the fragile victim. Then the doctor had his turn, and gleaned strength and comfort from the warm and ruddy draught, until he also was overcome and forgot to drink.
While both slept calmly and dreamlessly, the moon sailed above them and the dead woman, casting that backward glance over them with that strange grotesque humanising leer which the moon at this stage expresses.
The woman lay serenely by the side of the men with her naked bosom exposed and marble-like, and her still face once more beautiful in its chaste repose.
The shark also drew some feet closer to the boat, wondering, as he sniffed in those warm fumes, if his time had not also arrived.