So began Lang’s strangest professional experience. He got rid of his companions as soon as he could, returned to the hospital room, and studied the unconscious man with a doubled and most passionate interest. He could see no change in his condition; but he set himself to make a fresh and even more careful examination, recording temperature, blood pressure, pulse, reflex action on a sort of chart which he pinned to the wall for continual reference. When he had finished he pondered a long time, unable to make up his mind whether the state of coma was the result of some injury he had not discovered, or whether it was pure shock, neurasthenic paralysis, brought about by the strain of the “third degree.” Neither theory was quite justified by the symptoms, and Lang even considered the possibility that the unconsciousness was shammed, but this was incredible. To feign a week of complete paralysis would require a nerve control simply superhuman.
He went on deck afterward, still turning over the problem in his mind. He encountered Carroll, who took him up to the bridge, where Captain Harding kept a negligent watch, with a negro quartermaster at the wheel. Louie presently crept up the iron ladder also, looking silent and furtive as usual, and then Floyd came with a bottle of rum and a pitcher of fresh orange juice. It appeared that the bridge was the accustomed lounging place, for within half an hour the engineer off duty appeared also. He was a sallow man in grimy overalls, whom Lang had not previously seen. He stayed only a few minutes, however.
The rest drank their rum and chatted openly, since it was understood that Lang had thrown in his lot with them. They were all deeply disappointed that by some medical miracle Rockett could not be suddenly jerked back into consciousness. In fact, they still hoped for some such performance, and seemed to take it for granted that Rockett could be induced to part with the desired information as soon as his speech was restored. But Lang was doubtful. The face of the old wrecker was not that of a man easy to coerce.
“That bird’s got two hundred grand planted somewheres,” Louie muttered. “Leave me alone wit’ him, and I’ll make him talk.”
And suppose Rockett talked—suppose the plunderer recovered—what would become of Rockett then? Lang had already judged his shipmates to the point of believing that a dark night at sea and a man overboard might solve the difficulty.
And his own position, for that matter, might prove difficult, in spite of all the lavish promises of the gang, when the time came for Rockett to speak or die.
But for the present he was safe enough, and the ship’s company cherished him like gold. He felt in better health and spirits than for a long time. A new thrill of adventure entered into him. He had been violently wrenched away from the consideration of his own misfortunes, into a dangerous game whose stake might be anything, and his spirit had reacted to it. He thought with vivid anticipation of the tale he would have to tell Eva Morrison when he should at last present his promised report.
He lounged about the Cavite’s decks, trying to kill time, and his mind reverted much to Miss Morrison. He missed her extraordinarily. It was wonderful how, within but a few days, she had come to be a comrade whom it was hard to lose even temporarily. Of course he was not in love with her. In the desperate condition of his affairs it was no time to think of love, much less of marriage. Hard work and hard struggle must be his program for the coming years. And then it crossed his mind that if he recovered his twelve thousand dollars he could really think of love and marriage, too. It would be a very respectable starting capital for a country doctor.
But it was not a middle-aged wreck that Eva Morrison was destined to marry. He was startled at his own chain of thought, and went again to look at Rockett. The defaulter lay motionless, breathing slowly, unchanged in anything. Lang touched the grizzled head that must hold the secret of so much rascality and so much money.
“If you die, you’re dead. If you wake up and talk you’ll be murdered,” he murmured. “Better stay just as you are, my friend.”
He went back to the deck and basked in the fresh, warm sea air and the sun. It was hard to kill time on the Cavite. There seemed to be no books of any sort on board, but finally he discovered a pile of tattered old magazines in the cabin, and languidly turned them over in his deck chair. Every hour or so he visited his patient, without ever discovering any change. He dozed a little in the sun. Carroll and Harding seemed to spend most of the day on the bridge. Floyd disappeared into his cabin; and from time to time he caught sight of Louie prowling about the ship on affairs of his own, silent, secret, venomous.
There was a game of poker in the cabin that night, in which they all took part but Lang, leaving the steamer apparently in charge of the negro crew. Lang watched the game for some time, and went to bed late, but throughout the night he heard fitfully the mutter of voices, the rustle and click of cards and chips, the ring of glasses, and once the sound of a sudden, sharp altercation, which was immediately stilled.
They were a rather weary and heavy-eyed crew at breakfast. Carroll told him afterward that Floyd had won heavily; that he almost always won; that Louie was a bad-tempered loser, and that they always had to take his gun away from him when they played cards.
After breakfast Lang again visited his patient, and methodically took pulse and temperature, recording them on the chart. He looked again into the blind eyes, tested the reflexes, and found no change. He had been turned over, and that was all. Some one visited him periodically, every hour or two, Carroll had said, in hopes of a change, and this had been kept up day and night ever since he came on board.
That day was very much a duplicate of the one before it. The ship’s company left him to himself. Carroll invited him to the bridge, but he did not care for these rum gatherings, and declined, lounging in his deck chair, smoking, meditating. The company gathered for dinner and scattered again; and the Cavite continued to plow forward, at half speed, through ever-bluer seas where porpoises plunged looping, and flights of flying fish glittered past. They were heading nowhere. It was a real yachting cruise after all, Lang thought, complicated with medicine and something like piracy.
It turned hazy toward sunset and they ran into fog. All the same there was poker in the cabin that evening, though to Lang it seemed monstrous that the navigation of the ship should be abandoned to an ordinary sailor in such weather. It was hot and damp; the cabin reeked with whisky and tobacco smoke, and when Lang went on deck about nine o’clock he found the air close and muggy, and so dense with fog that each of the ship’s lights glowed in a cottony ball of vapor.
He looked on at the card players for an hour, tried to read, went on deck again, took a last look at Rockett, and finally went to his berth, trying to believe that Jerry Harding knew his business.
The noise of the gamblers beyond the door kept him awake for some time, but he slept soundly at last. A frightful roar awakened him that seemed to shake the whole earth. It was their own siren, blowing appallingly up above, and he heard startled exclamations in the saloon, a crash of glasses upset, and a rush of feet to the deck.
The next moment another steam whistle mixed with the bellowing uproar of their own—right overhead, too, it seemed—and as Lang jumped from his berth he was pitched across the stateroom by a terrific shock.
The floor tilted under him, heeling over, over, till it seemed as if the ship were capsizing. He heard a tumult of yelling that seemed over him, under, he knew not where. And then, with a terrible grinding and rending, the Cavite reeled back to an even keel, and he heard a great splashing of water.
Lang righted himself, too, pulled on trousers and coat and rushed out and up, barefooted, to the deck. The ship’s electric lights went suddenly out, flickered, and then shone again. He could still hear an uncertain throbbing of the engines.
A dark scrimmage of men surged over the deck, apparently to no purpose. The fog hung blindingly close, but perhaps a quarter of a mile away loomed and shone a vast glare of white light. It was the vessel that had run into them, her outlines invisible in the fog. He could hear her steam blowing off with a roar, and even the sound of furious shouting aboard her; but she showed nothing but the diffused glow of all her lights.
The Cavite was still moving ahead slowly, under her momentum now, for her engines had stopped. Lang could hear water cascading into her. It sounded as if she had been cut half in two. She was lower in the water already; and Lang suddenly remembered his patient below, who was likely to be drowned like a rat in his berth.
He rushed down to the cabin again. The lights were out, and he slipped on spilled liquor and scattered cards, and groped into the hospital stateroom. At the door he stopped short, as if he saw a resurrection from the dead.
Rockett was sitting up, on the edge of the berth. There was a dim glow in the room from the porthole. He was moving; he seemed to be trying to get to his feet.
The next instant it flashed upon Lang that the shock of the collision had worked a miracle; had startled the stunned nerves out of their paralysis. He rushed to the berth and seized the man around his big chest.
“Are we—going down?” he heard a thick, lifeless whisper.
“I think so,” said Lang, too flurried to realize the queerness of the colloquy. “You must get on deck. Here, lean on me. Can you stand?”
“Hold on,” said Rockett, in his thick mutter. “Got to—beat these pirates. Listen—you know—north of Persia——”
“Do you want to tell me where you’ve hidden the money? Be quick!” said Lang sharply.
“Wait. Six to—nine. Twelve o’clock. Remember—noon——”
A rush of feet outside, and Carroll plunged into the room. He stopped short with an astounded cry, as Lang had done.
“By God, he’s alive! He spoke. I heard him. What did he say?”
“Delirious. Raving,” Lang snapped. “Here, help me get him on deck.”
A sudden wild stampede of yelling men thundered across the deck overhead. There was no time for talk. Between them they gripped the big man around the body, and half dragged, half carried him across the cabin. He was enormously heavy, and seemed to sag back into paralysis again, so that it was with the utmost breathless straining that they got him up the stairs to the deck, where all hell seemed to have broken loose.
The other steamer, more distant now, had turned a searchlight on her victim, dimly illumining the Cavite’s decks, and began to sound her roaring siren again, as in desperate signaling. Lang’s first glance saw the black water. It seemed almost up to the level of his feet.
A dark scrimmage of men was surging about the motor launch that was hoisted in amidships. They hacked savagely at the tackle, with curses and shrieks, black faces and white, a shifting, squirming medley. Lang caught a glimpse of Harding hitting out. Knives flashed. A figure in a white sweater was shot out of the mob, falling on the deck. Louie raised his arm and projected two tiny red flashes, the reports drowned by the uproar.
Then the motor boat went over with a great splash, and the wave of its launching surged over the Cavite’s deck.
“Keep out of that. This way!” Carroll was saying, dragging him toward the other side.
Here hung the other boat, seldom used, and forgotten at the moment. Letting go Rockett, Carroll strove to loosen the tackle, which seemed jammed. The Cavite lurched heavily forward. A surge seemed to wash clear over her.
Lang snatched a life belt and slipped it over Rockett’s shoulders. He could see no other. Carroll was still wrenching desperately and swearing at the boat. Leaning heavily on his shoulder, Rockett muttered hoarsely in Lang’s ear.
“I’m going under. Remember—I trust you. Go to—my house north of Persia. See six and nine—the digger—twelve o’clock. Noon. Remember—the negro digger——”
The whole deck suddenly tilted forward as the ship plunged bow first, till Rockett and Lang tumbled together down the slope into black water. Lang went under, came up, but Rockett had gone. Everything was black, and in terror of being drawn down with the sinking ship he struck out desperately, blindly.
He was no great swimmer, but he made headway with sheer energy. He found himself suddenly clear of the ship. A long way behind him she towered up, standing on end, her stern rising yards into the fog, towering like a skyscraper, as she hung balanced before finally sinking. He saw the rusty hull, the screw, the rudder hanging high overhead. He took it all in with one terrified glance, and the same glance showed him a floating object a yard away, a big deck chair which he gripped.
The next minute the nightmare figure of the steamer plunged down, in a vast flood that seemed to carry him with it. He clung like death to the wooden chair frame, almost beaten out of consciousness, holding his breath, hardly realizing it at last when he found himself afloat again. A heavy swell went over him; another heaved him and dropped him; and his misted eyes saw again the great blurred glow of the strange steamer, much more distant now, and all around him a frothing welter.
He still held the chair, but he was almost too weak to cling to it. Boats would be coming, he knew; he had only to keep afloat a few minutes more. The swell of the Cavite’s sinking was subsiding, but his hands slipped from the chair frame; he almost went under, recovered himself with a wild clutch, almost gave up hope. Dimly he heard a shout. Something was floating within a few feet. It was an overturned boat, with a man dimly outlined astride the keel. Lang could never have reached it unaided, but somehow, he knew not how, he found himself supported, assisted, half dragged upon the rounded boat keel.
“Where’s Rockett?” his rescuer shouted in his ear. It was only then that he recognized Carroll, but Lang was too exhausted to do more than shake his head feebly.