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Whether the flash and detonation frightened them; whether Perdosa, still clinging to his rock, managed to turn their attention by his flanking efforts, or whether, quite simply, the wall of dead finally turned them back, I do not know, but with one accord they gave over the attempt.
So when Perdosa sets his genius for lock-picking to the task, the inner box, full of the genuine article, has no warning sign-post, so to speak. Everything's peaceful until they raise the compound-filled hollow layer of the inner cover, which serves to interrupt the action. Then comes the general exit and the superior fireworks." "That's when the rays ran through the ship," said Slade.
There the men threw themselves flat and drank in great gulps until they could drink no more. We built a fire, but the Nigger refused to cook. "Someone else turn," he growled, "I cook aboard ship." Perdosa, who had hewed the fuel, at once became angry. "I cut heem de wood!" he said, "I do my share; eef I cut heem de wood you mus' cook heem de grub!"
For a moment I could not understand this, then remembered the disappearance of Perdosa. My heart jumped wildly, for the Mexican had been gone quite long enough to have cut off the assistant's escape. I could not doubt that he would pick off his man at close range as soon as the fugitive should have reached the entrance to the arroyo.
The captain thereupon felled him to the deck, and began brutally to kick him in the face and head. Perdosa writhed and begged, but without avail. The other members of the crew gathered near. After a moment, they began to murmur. Finally Thrackles ventured, most respectfully, to intervene. "You'll kill him, sir," he interposed. "He's had enough." "Had enough, has he?" screeched the captain.
Each discovered that the others knew nothing; and each blundered against the astounding fact of double wages. "All I know is the pay's good; and that's enough," concluded Thrackles, from a bunk. "The pay's too good," growled Handy Solomon. "This ain't no job to go look at the 'clipse of the moon, or the devil's a preacher!" "W'at you maik heem, den?" queried Perdosa.
Generally I lay across my bunk smoking my pipe while Handy Solomon held forth, his speech punctuated by surly speculations from the Nigger, with hesitating deep-sea wisdom from the hairy Thrackles, or with voluminous bursts of fractured English from Perdosa. Pulz had nothing to offer, but watched from his pale green eyes.
The first evening we took him over to the cliff's edge he laughed aloud. "Jove, boys, how could you guess it all wrong," he wondered. With a few brief words he set us right, Pulz, Perdosa, and I listening intently; the others indifferent in the hopelessness of being able to comprehend.
Perdosa and I, with infinite pains, tracked and stalked the sheep, of which I killed one. We found the mutton excellent. The hunting was difficult, and the quarry, as time went on, more and more suspicious, but henceforward we did not lack for fresh meat. Furthermore we soon discovered that fine trolling was to be had outside the reef.
"Something that pays big." Thrackles supplied the desired answer. "Dat chis' " suggested Perdosa. "Voodoo " muttered the Nigger. "That's to scare us out," said Handy Solomon, with vast contempt. "That's what makes me sure it is the chest." Pulz muttered some of the jargon of alchemy. "That's it," approved Handy Solomon. "If we could get " "We wouldn't know how to use it," interrupted Pulz.
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