CHAPTER XXIV.
THE DEAD CALM.
The dastard crime was consummated which, had they committed no other in their evil lives, must have rendered them accursed and outlawed from every consideration human and natural. They had crept in the most deadly and infamous fashion that black murder can creep, and done their benefactors to death at one fell stroke.
Dr Fernandez slept calmly while his deadly dose seized upon the vitals of those brave and generous men who dropped down one after the other, and expired amidst terrible pangs of agony. The man at the wheel fell against the spokes, and clutching them in his last throes, still held on to them with death's vice-like grip; the captain before his charts; the officers on their side of the poop; the watch above, as they were cleaning down the decks; and the watch below, with their rumpled bedclothes between their clenched teeth, now lay doubled and livid in their bunks; the black cook in his galley, and the handsome young apprentice boy, who had played the con-
205
