delay - and already I was tossing blankets with the rest. Looking
up in an enforced pause, I saw Santos whispering in the skipper's
ear, with the expression of a sphinx but no lack of foreign
gesticulation - behind them a fringe of terror-stricken faces,
parted at that instant by two more figures, as wild and strange as
any in that wild, strange scene. One was our luckless lucky digger,
the other a gigantic Zambesi nigger, who for days had been told off
to watch him; this was the servant (or rather the slave) of Senhor
Santos.

The digger planted himself before the captain. His face was
reddened by a fire as consuming as that within the bowels of our
gallant ship. He had a huge, unwieldy bundle under either arm.

"Plain question - plain answer," we heard him stutter. "Is there
any *** chance of saving this *** ship?"

His adjectives were too foul for print; they were given with such
a special effort at distinctness, however, that I was smiling one
instant, and giving thanks the next that Eva Denison had not come
forward with her guardian. Meanwhile the skipper had exchanged a
glance with Senhor Santos, and I think we all felt that he was going
to tell us the truth.

He told it in two words - "Very little."

Then the first individual tragedy was enacted before every eye.
With a yell the drunken maniac rushed to the rail. The nigger was
at his heels - he was too late. Uttering another and more piercing
shriek, the madman was overboard at a bound; one of his bundles