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Pretty, indeed, to be caught there like a rat. I crept softly up the companion-way and peeped at him. He was lying as I had left him. Again I went below; but before I dropped into the lazarette I took the precaution of casting down the door in advance. At least there would be no lid to the trap. But it was all needless.
Always a blow was to be expected from blacks when white men were not around. Both the mate and the captain were on deck, and Jerry, though unafraid, continued his investigations cautiously. But at the doorless entrance to the lazarette aft, he threw caution to the winds and darted in in pursuit of the new scent that came to his nostrils.
I heartily wished them overboard; and yet, after all, they were not very much more dangerous than the wine and spirits in the lazarette and fore-hold.
The lazarette was directly beneath the cabin, and, opening the trap-door in the floor and carrying a candle with me, I dropped down and began overhauling the ship's stores. I selected mainly from the canned goods, and by the time I was ready, willing hands were extended from above to receive what I passed up. We worked in silence.
"When Father and Mr Barber agreed upon this voyage they decided that they ought to have the means of defending the ship, if necessary, and so Father bought a dozen rifles with bayonets, and three brace of navy revolvers, with a good supply of ammunition for both kinds of firearms. They're in two cases, down in the lazarette." "Do the men for'ard know they're aboard?" I asked.
Here, too, since she was to be eaten and since the taboo had no bearing upon one condemned to be cooked, the thin little Mary from the lazarette was tumbled trussed upon the floor among the many blacks who had teased and mocked her for being fattened by Van Horn for the eating. And to this canoe house Jerry was also brought to join the others on the floor.
The transfer of those eight heavy steel-bound chests with their contents was a trying job, but nothing would induce the men to leave a single one of them where they were for another night; they insisted on being allowed to stick to their task until it was completed; and, by dint of such strenuous effort as probably none of them had ever before exerted, the task was completed a few minutes after sunset; following upon which I caused the whole to be securely fastened up and struck down into the lazarette.
I queried. "Confess, now, in warning me for my own good, that you are very consistent." He ignored my sarcasm, saying, "Suppose I clap the hatch on, now? You won't fool me as you did in the lazarette." "Wolf Larsen," I said sternly, for the first time addressing him by this his most familiar name, "I am unable to shoot a helpless, unresisting man.
But he checked himself in the doorway, and without looking back, "By the bye," he said, "there should be an empty wooden case put away in the lazarette. It has not been broken up has it?" The mate shut his mouth, and then asked as if dazed, "What empty case, sir?" "A big flat packing-case belonging to that painting in my room. Let it be taken up on deck and tell the carpenter to look it over.
Before you and I were born it was long-established and it was established on brass tacks. They knew what they were about, the old cusses, when they put the grub in the lazarette."
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