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Instantly Kamasura, who had evidently anticipated the order, came staggering into the room with a literal armful of bottles. Hovey himself brought a glass and placed it in the hand of Klopp and filled it to the brim. "Drink!" shouted Hovey, and sprang upon a chair so that all might see him. "Drink to Fritz Klopp!
White Henshaw potted him, but he laughs at death, and he'll bring the old Heron to shore. Here's to Fritz Klopp!" Many a glass was raised high. They drank with a shout of applause to Fritz Klopp, who sat without stirring his glass, one hand upon it, and the other buried among the heaps of gold, his head resting against the back of the chair, and his red mouth still ajar in that horrible grin.
He took a long look at Henshaw, and then he went out with his head down." "What did it all mean?" asked Harrigan. "I don't know. I don't dare think what it means. But if my guess is right, then the Heron is a lot nearer hell than even you and I expected. Look, there goes Fritz Klopp, the first assistant engineer. I'll wager he's got another complaint about the heat in the fireroom."
To sit down toward the evening on the summit of the Klopp to see the town at its base, with an immense horizon on all sides, the mountains overshadowing all to see the slated roofs smoking, the shadows lengthening, and the scenery breathing to life the verses of Virgil to respire at once the wind which rustles the leaves, the breeze of the flood, and the gale of the mountain is an exquisite and inexpressible pleasure, full of secret enjoyment, which is veiled by the grandeur of the spectacle, by the intensity of contemplation.
There was no fighting or complaint over the division of the spoils. What difference did a few hundred pieces here or there matter? Gold in floods, gold in oceans, was before them, and each man gathered his own share close. But where there is gold there is death. One of the firemen said in the ear of Hovey: "The second assistant Fritz Klopp he is dying."
There sat the body of Fritz Klopp as it had remained ever since the beginning of the revels the day before, grinning up at the ceiling. Hall and Flint raised the body, and the clutching fingers were found to be frozen by death immovably around a whole handful of gold. As Hall suggested, this would serve as lead to take him to the bottom of the sea.
The others applauded the thought, and with his hand still full of gold, they carried Fritz Klopp to the rail and dumped him into the water. As they re-entered the cabin, Campbell was kicked in from the opposite door. His hands were manacled behind him, and the force of the kick, together with a sway of the ship, threw him off his balance. He crashed on his face at the feet of Hovey.
He had forgotten death. "You will live!" rumbled Sam Hall. "A man would be a fool to die when there's so much money in sight. Where's your hurt?" "I have no hurt," whispered Klopp hoarsely, "but I'm on fire inside. Water! Something to drink!" "Something to drink, but not water," responded Hovey. "Hey, Kamasura! Drink! Whisky!"
He had been one of the first to leap at White Henshaw, and a bullet from the captain's revolver had torn its way through his lungs; his eyes were glazing fast when two of the firemen carried him into the outer cabin of White Henshaw and placed him in an armchair beside the desk. "How are you, Klopp?" asked Hovey.
It was upon Klopp that they depended for the running of the Heron. Hovey merely laughed: "Carry him in here. He'll come to life when he sees this!" They had left Klopp lying on the deck.