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Updated: June 13, 2025
If he had won past they would have followed as obstinately as sheep, and nothing could have stopped them, but the big bull went down beneath the clubs. Thrackles hit the animal two vindictive blows after it had succumbed. This settled the revolt, and we stood as before. Pulz and Handy Solomon tried to converse by signs, but evidently failed, for their faces showed angry in the twilight.
The Nigger became more sullen; Perdosa more snake-like; Pulz more viciously evil; Thrackles more brutal; while Handy Solomon staggering from his seat to the open keg and back again, roaring fragments of a chanty, his red headgear contrasting with his smoky black hair and his swarthy hook-nosed countenance he needed no further touch.
"What kind of hell has broke loose?" muttered Pulz. The Nigger fell flat on his face, uttering deep lamentations. "Voodoo! Voodoo!" he groaned. A gentle shower of white flakes began, powdering the surface of everything. Far out to sea we could make out the sun on the water. Gradually the roaring died down; the lightning ceased. Comparative peace ensued. We looked again toward the cliff.
They followed their own ideas, which led them nowhere. Someone lit the forecastle lamp. They settled themselves. Pulz read aloud. This was the programme every day during the dog watch. Sometimes the watch on deck was absent, leaving only Handy Solomon, the Nigger and Pulz, but the order of the day was not on that account varied. They talked, they lit the lamp, they read.
We spoke of trivialities almost for the first time since our landing, fused into a temporary but complete good fellowship by the relief. "Wonder how the old doctor is getting on?" ventured Thrackles, after a while. "The devil's a preacher! I wonder?" cried Handy Solomon. "Let's make 'em a call," suggested Pulz. "Don't believe they'd appreciate the compliment," I laughed.
We had to shield our faces against the heat, and the wooden railing under our hands was growing warm. Pulz turned an ashy countenance toward us. "My God," he screamed. "What's going to happen when she hits the sea?" She hit the sea, and immediately a great cloud of steam arose, and the hissing as of a thousand serpents.
The master had become a stuffed figure, a bogie with which to frighten, an empty bladder that a prick would collapse. With what grace I could muster, I had to give in. "You'll have to have it your own way, I suppose," I snapped. Thrackles grinned, and Pulz started to say something, but Handy Solomon, with a peremptory gesture, and a black scowl, stopped him short.
"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.
"Well, you take what's left." He marked Thrackles heavily over the eye. There was a breathless pause; and then Thrackles, Pulz, the Nigger, and Perdosa attacked at once. They caught the master unawares, and bore him to the deck. I dropped at once to the ratlines, and commenced my descent. Before I had reached the deck, however, Selover was afoot again, the four hanging to him like dogs.
"Could a man make diamonds?" asked Pulz abruptly. I could hear the sharp intake of the men's breathing as they hung on the reply. "Much more wonderful changes than that it can accomplish," replied the doctor, with an indulgent laugh. "That change iss simple. Carbon iss coal; carbon iss diamond. You see? One has but to change the form, not the substance."
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