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For three more days the juggernaut of Sam Murdock's dray hauled heavy furniture over the prostrate spirit of Clem. Faster than he could unpack the stuff was it unpiled at his door. And it was poor stuff, moreover, in the opinion of Little Arcady.
Murdock saw the skipper swept out; but did not move. Captain Smith was but one of a multitude of lost at that moment. Murdock may have known that the last desperate thought of the gray mariner was to get upon his bridge and die in command. That the old man could not have done this may have had something to do with Murdock's suicidal inspiration. Of that no man may say or safely guess.
"Who's jam boss?" "Larsen." "Who's in charge of the river, then?" demanded Welton sharply. "Why, young Orde!" replied the riverman, surprised. "Since when?" "Since he blew up Murdock's piles." "Oh, he did that, did he? I suppose he fired Darrell, too?" "Sure. It was a peach of a scrap." "Scrap?" "Yep. That Orde boy is a wonder. He just ruined Roaring Dick." "He did, did he?" commented Welton.
Were the Baldies, who centuries ago had hunted down so ruthlessly the Russians who had dared to loot their wrecked ships, still on Topaz? He remembered the story of Ross Murdock's escape from those aliens in the far past of Europe, and he shivered. Murdock was tough, steel tough, yet his own description of that epic chase and the final meeting had carried with it his terror.
Wherever Murdock's eye swept the water in that instant, before he drew his revolver, it looked upon veritable seas of drowning men and women. From the decks there came to him the shrieks and groans of the caged and drowning, for whom all hope of escape was utterly vanished.
If an alarm were raised, and Murdock's dogs were brought out, they might track him along the road. Somewhere behind the Beecham's house, running through the woods, there was a small stream. It came within three hundred yards of the house; then there was a long row of thick bushes which led up to the garden. The negroes' shanties were far to the other side.
Doctor Murdock's house was high on Malabar Hill. Their hired carriage came in behind his trim little brougham, as it turned on the driveway into his compound. "My fortune again!" the Doctor called. "I've been detained by a case and properly sweating for fear you'd reach my den first." Tea was served on a verandah entirely foreign and tropical and strange looking to Skag.
"Won't you let me take you to the house?" she begged. "No have to get back to the lines." "But you can't, Tom. You're sick. It's the fever that makes you hot. Oh, Tom...." "Got to get back to the lines," he interrupted. "Start in a few minutes. I guess ... sleep a little first. Mustn't be captured. You wake me up if anyone comes. Murdock's dogs...." It was night when his brain cleared again.
This was the purport of Murdock's letter, if we except a kind of inquiry after 'Lina, of whose death he had not heard. The second, for Alice, was from Anna Richards, who was also ignorant as yet of 'Lina's decease.
He called upon Mr Murdock, his partner, in the evening, explaining the arrangement which he had made to pay a visit to Cuba, including the rather singular proposal of Senor Montijo to which he had consented, as to the apparent ownership of the new yacht; and listened patiently but unconvinced to all Murdock's arguments against what the canny Northumbrian unhesitatingly denounced as an utterly hare-brained scheme.
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