“Don’t kill one of the others,” he said. “Kill me. I am not so starved as they.”
“Griggs,” I replied, “has begged me to kill him first.”
The emaciated passenger turned as I said the words and shot a look at Griggs. The twelve days we had spent on that raft in the trackless ocean had set the seal of starvation upon each of us, although the young woman bore it best, but Griggs had suffered unspeakably.
He was prostrate against the solitary water barrel which a rain had filled the night before. But for that Griggs must have died, surely. The girl was holding the wet end of a rag to his lips.
“I suppose,” I said, slowly, and with pain, for the long-drawn-out agony of thirst and starvation seemed to have affected my throat most of all, “I suppose there’s no use hoping for land or a sail.”
Before the starving man could reply, the girl had made her way to where we crouched. The sea was running high, but she did not crawl when she moved about, as did the rest of us.
“I know what you men have been talking about these two days.” she said.
There she paused. So weak was this young creature from lack of food and drink that her voice was the merest whisper. I wanted to support her with an arm, but my weakness had grown upon me since the last biscuit was eaten, and I could do no more than get up on my hands and knees. I felt dizzy.
“Can we not,” she said, “wait another day before any one is killed and eaten?”
“You’ve made us wait two days as it is,” I managed to answer. “Another twenty-four hours of this and there won’t be any of us alive to eat at all. That’s why I want to be killed and eaten here and now.”
I sank back to the board that had been my bed for so many hungry hours. I had not spoken so much for a week. The effort tried me like felling timber.
The girl put her skinny elbow beneath my head and placed her lips against my ear.
“I’ve saved a mouthful of bread for you,” she whispered.
The next moment there was a running stream down the inside of my cheeks, like a flood. The feeling had been brought on by the bit of food the girl had put stealthily on the end of my tongue. I nearly gasped as I moved that bite of crust into the side of my jaw where my teeth came down upon it like sledge-hammers. I chewed furtively two or three times, for I was afraid to let them see me do it. Not that they would have fallen upon me. They were all too weak. But I knew that the sight of me eating a lump of bread would prove to my companions on that raft as tormenting as fire and faggot.
The girl had left my side and was now standing beside the Dutch cook. I could not see his face, but the sight of her lips close to the big, hairy ear gave me an idea.
“Jinks!” I whispered as loudly as I could.
The emaciated passenger who had begged me to kill him turned his gaunt eyes upon me when he heard his name.
“That girl gave you a mouthful of bread yesterday when she whispered in your ear.”
He bent his head.
“She’s just give me a mouthful of bread. I believe she’s giving the cook a mouthful now.”
We both looked over towards the sea chest against which the cook’s head was propped. The girl had crossed the raft to where the improvised mast bore its fluttering signal of distress, but the cook was furtively chewing a mouthful.
I crawled upon my hands and knees to where the girl was.
“I’ll kill the next man you feed,” I said. “Eat your bread yourself.”
“You got the last mouthful,” she said.
Never a suspicion that she might be lying crossed my mind. I paid no more attention to the girl. My mind was obsessed by another notion. I thought I would swoon as I retraced my path to where Jinks was lying.
“Say!” I said hoarsely, “you say you’re willing to die to make a meal for the rest of us?”
“My God, yes!”
“How are we going to kill you?”
Jinks stared wildly about. There were two blunt knives aboard and an axe. I took no stock in the axe. Not one of us had the strength left to lift it. The knives were too blunt to be of use in opening a vein, for the simple reason that every man on the raft had been brought so low by hunger and weakness that he could not have pressed it even against his own skinny wrist.
“I’ll tie a handkerchief about my throat and stangle,” said Jinks.
He had the knot tied in a jiffy, but he was too weak to pull with enough energy for strangulation. He gave up in five minutes and lay still.
But the procedure of Jinks had given me a suggestion. I crawled over to the one bit of rope still with us. It bound the timbers of the raft we had hastily constructed when the ship went down. But try as I might, it was too strongly knotted to be unloosed by any effort of a starving man.
Here was a crisis, indeed. Our one hope of life was the slaughter of a man, but here were we too weak from loss of food and drink to be capable of murder.
“Mr. Blake!”
Starved though I was, I almost started up. The girl’s lips were once more at my ear.
“I must tell you something,” she gasped.
Her long hair fell in a cascade about my face. She turned to look at the others behind me, as if she were fearful of some secret of which she might be sole guardian. In another moment I knew what the secret was, because she bent her head over mine and kissed my lips.
How cool her mouth was! It was like a long, cold drink.
“Now you know,” she whispered. “I love you. Wait one more day for me.”
In another minute she was making her way back to the cook’s side. I saw her dip her rag into the flowing sea and swab his horrible feet as he lay against the sea chest. But I thought no more of death.
Slowly and heavily the burning sun dropped into the waters far beyond the sky. Out peered the stars. The starving men all about me lay like logs of the raft that bore them on, on. I could barely discern the shadows we made as midnight drew forward and brought the moon up the sky.
“Blake!”
I turned my head slowly at this whisper of my name. It was Griggs.
“Let us hang on another day,” he whispered. Then he swooned. “Yes,” I whispered, in an hour, when he recovered consciousness. “Let us hang on.”
I no longer remembered, as I said the words, that our last bite of food had gone down our throats the day before; that our last few pints of water were in the barrel beneath the mast. I would live for love. Griggs crawled back to where the cook lay.
“My darling!”
I barely caught the whisper, ut I had seen her coming and the sight revived me. I tried to put an arm about her waist, but only a hand reached hers.
“Dearest,” she whispered, “don’t let them see us.”
She had kissed my lips and gone before I could utter a word. It was as well, for in a moment more I was looking into the glaring eyes of Jinks.
“We’ll wait another day,” he said; “another day before I die to feed you all.”
His face was withdrawn, but I had not the strength to gaze after his retreating figure. Nor did I think of death any more. My mind ran on that devoted girl. How pretty she seemed among the starving thirty of us! Would she come back and kiss me once again? I managed to lift my head from the bottom of the raft and turned it for a sight of her. The blackness of a Pacific night was upon the deep, yet I could see the outline of the sea chest, behind which she retreated for sleep when the shadows fell. The cook’s bulk obscured its outline to my glance, for he was sprawled in front of it. The dawn could not be far away, unless the stars were lying, but the sea was rising and falling heavily like a sleeper in pain. A vague alarm for her seized me on a sudden, and I essayed to walk to where she was.
I could not get upon my feet. Upon my hands and knees I moved like a shadow. Had I the wealth of Ormuzd and of Ind I would have given all of it to be able to speak her name aloud. But what was her name? It dawned upon me for the first time since we kissed that I knew not her name nor anything about her. She was one of the passengers in the wrecked ship. So was I. Then she could not possibly know my full name, unless some purser or steward had revealed it. Well, I would question her regarding these things when I had reached her side.
Would I ever do so? Minute after minute I spent crawling to the chest. The starving men lay in slumber or in swoon, quite motionless. I wondered if the cook, too, could be asleep.
My head swam from the exertion of so much of my strength as was left after these long days without food or drink. I collapsed and lay motionless, until repose should have brought back some capacity to use my knees and hands.
I heard whispers. Her voice! Slowly I wrenched my neck about until my eyes were on a level with the top of the sea chest. There I clung, fearing the swoon.
“Darling!”
“Wait one day for the woman who loves you.”
Then I heard the sound of a kiss.
Slowly and silently I dragged myself to the top of the sea chest. A strange fury had brought me strength. I peered down upon the girl.
She had one arm about the cook’s neck. Her long hair swept his face. I could see by the light of the moon that his horrible paw rested upon her shoulder. I would have given this world for strength enough to clutch her by the throat.
“Wait one more day for me, beloved!” I heard her whisper. Then she stole around to the other side of the chest.
I was waiting for her. Resisting an impulse to drag her with me into that running sea—an impulse for which rage and hate would have given me strength—I hissed:
“Wanton! I saw you kiss that Dutch fiend. I heard every word you spoke to him!”
The little blood left in me rushed to my brain and I fell beside the chest. She crawled to where I lay and put an arm about me.
I bit her.
“Leave me!” I managed to groan faintly. “Leave me!”
I could just make out the dawn at the other extremity of the horizon. I resolved that this day would bring my death.
“I had to do it,” I heard her whisper, as she placed her lips to my ear. “That Dutchman would have killed one of you a week ago for food, but I made love to him to save our lives. I took his knife away while he had still strength left to use it and I threw it into the sea.”
“You lie!” I managed to hiss out. “Griggs wanted to die that we might eat him.”
“Yes, and I won him over to life with my kisses.”
“Vile woman!”
I wanted to roar the words, but my voice scarcely attained the volume of a whisper. She had placed my head in her lap and I lay looking up helplessly into her face. Fury filled me and I tried to call for help.
“Jinks!” I moaned. “Jinks!”
“Jinks will do nothing for you,” she whispered. “I have bought him too with my kisses. I have bribed every man on this raft to wait by telling him he alone has my love.”
She relaxed her hold of my neck and leaned against the chest like a woman in a faint. I watched her closed eyes with the helpless fury of a starving man.
“Had I the strength,” I muttered, “I would throw you into these waters. You have been the ruin of us all.”
“I have saved you,” she whispered. “Look!”
I followed her pointing finger with my eye, and upon the waters, lit up now by the dawn, I saw a sail.