Part 14 (1/2)

The boatswain was about to stop him, but before he could interfere Curtis was standing and looking Owen steadily in the face.

”Ah, captain, I've got a word from my mates to say to you,” he said, with all the effrontery imaginable.

”Say on, then,” said the captain coolly.

”We should like to know about that little keg of brandy. Is it being kept for the porpoises or the officers?”

Finding that he obtained no reply, he went on:

”Look here, captain, what we want is to have our grog served out every morning as usual.”

”Then you certainly will not,” said the captain.

”What! what!” exclaimed Owen, ”don't you mean to let us have our grog?”

”Once and for all, no.”

For a moment, with a malicious grin upon his lips, Owen stood confronting the captain; then, as though thinking better of himself, he turned round and rejoined his companions, who were still talking together in an undertone.

When I was afterward discussing the matter with Curtis, I asked him whether he was sure he had done right in refusing the brandy.

”Right!” he cried, ”to be sure I have. Allow those men to have brandy!

I would throw it all overboard first.”

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

A SQUALL

DECEMBER 21.--No further disturbance has taken place among the men. For a few hours the fish appeared again, and we caught a great many of them, and stored them away in an empty barrel. This addition to our stock of provisions makes us hope that food, at least, will not fail us.

Usually the nights in the tropics are cool, but to-day, as the evening drew on, the wonted freshness did not return, but the air remained stifling and oppressive, while heavy ma.s.ses of vapor hung over the water.

There was no moonlight; there would be a new moon at half-past one in the morning, but the night was singularly dark, except for dazzling flashes of summer lightning that from time to time illuminated the horizon far and wide. There was, however, no answering roll of thunder, and the silence of the atmosphere seemed almost awful.

For a couple of hours, in the vain hope of catching a breath of air, Miss Herbey, Andre Letourneur, and I, sat watching the imposing struggle of the electric vapors. The clouds appeared like embattled turrets crested with flame, and the very sailors, coa.r.s.e-minded men as they were, seemed struck with the grandeur of the spectacle, and regarded attentively, though with an anxious eye, the preliminary tokens of a coming storm. Until midnight we kept our seats upon the stern of the raft, while the lightning ever and again shed around us a livid glare similar to that produced by adding salt to lighted alcohol.

”Are you afraid of a storm. Miss Herbey?” said Andre to the girl.

”No, Mr. Andre, my feelings are always rather those of awe than of fear,” she replied. ”I consider a storm one of the sublimest phenomena that we can behold--don't you think so too?”

”Yes, and especially when the thunder is pealing,” he said; ”that majestic rolling, far different to the sharp crash of artillery, rises and falls like the long-drawn notes of the grandest music, and I can safely say that the tones of the most accomplished artiste have never moved me like that incomparable voice of nature.”

”Rather a deep ba.s.s, though,” I said, laughing.

”That may be,” he answered; ”but I wish we might hear it now, for this silent lightning is somewhat unexpressive.”