第48章

he asked himself anxiously.If only he had Tom there - the trusty seaman who had fought at his right hand in a cutting out affair or two, and had always preached to him the necessity to take care of himself."For it's no great trick," he used to say, "to get yourself killed in a hot fight.Any fool can do that.The proper pastime is to fight the Frenchies and then live to fight another day."Byrne found it a hard matter not to fall into listening to the silence.Somehow he had the conviction that nothing would break it unless he heard again the haunting sound of Tom's voice.He had heard it twice before.Odd! And yet no wonder, he argued with himself reasonably, since he had been thinking of the man for over thirty hours continuously and, what's more, inconclusively.For his anxiety for Tom had never taken a definite shape."Disappear,"was the only word connected with the idea of Tom's danger.It was very vague and awful."Disappear!" What did that mean?

Byrne shuddered, and then said to himself that he must be a little feverish.But Tom had not disappeared.Byrne had just heard of him.And again the young man felt the blood beating in his ears.

He sat still expecting every moment to hear through the pulsating strokes the sound of Tom's voice.He waited straining his ears, but nothing came.Suddenly the thought occurred to him: "He has not disappeared, but he cannot make himself heard."He jumped up from the arm-chair.How absurd! Laying his pistol and his hanger on the table he took off his boots and, feeling suddenly too tired to stand, flung himself on the bed which he found soft and comfortable beyond his hopes.

He had felt very wakeful, but he must have dozed off after all, because the next thing he knew he was sitting up in bed and trying to recollect what it was that Tom's voice had said.Oh! He remembered it now.It had said: "Mr.Byrne! Look out, sir!" Awarning this.But against what?

He landed with one leap in the middle of the floor, gasped once, then looked all round the room.The window was shuttered and barred with an iron bar.Again he ran his eyes slowly all round the bare walls, and even looked up at the ceiling, which was rather high.Afterwards he went to the door to examine the fastenings.

They consisted of two enormous iron bolts sliding into holes made in the wall; and as the corridor outside was too narrow to admit of any battering arrangement or even to permit an axe to be swung, nothing could burst the door open - unless gunpowder.But while he was still making sure that the lower bolt was pushed well home, he received the impression of somebody's presence in the room.It was so strong that he spun round quicker than lightning.There was no one.Who could there be? And yet...

It was then that he lost the decorum and restraint a man keeps up for his own sake.He got down on his hands and knees, with the lamp on the floor, to look under the bed, like a silly girl.He saw a lot of dust and nothing else.He got up, his cheeks burning, and walked about discontented with his own behaviour and unreasonably angry with Tom for not leaving him alone.The words:

"Mr.Byrne! Look out, sir," kept on repeating themselves in his head in a tone of warning.

"Hadn't I better just throw myself on the bed and try to go to sleep," he asked himself.But his eyes fell on the tall wardrobe, and he went towards it feeling irritated with himself and yet unable to desist.How he could explain to-morrow the burglarious misdeed to the two odious witches he had no idea.Nevertheless he inserted the point of his hanger between the two halves of the door and tried to prize them open.They resisted.He swore, sticking now hotly to his purpose.His mutter: "I hope you will be satisfied, confound you," was addressed to the absent Tom.Just then the doors gave way and flew open.

He was there.

He - the trusty, sagacious, and courageous Tom was there, drawn up shadowy and stiff, in a prudent silence, which his wide-open eyes by their fixed gleam seemed to command Byrne to respect.But Byrne was too startled to make a sound.Amazed, he stepped back a little - and on the instant the seaman flung himself forward headlong as if to clasp his officer round the neck.Instinctively Byrne put out his faltering arms; he felt the horrible rigidity of the body and then the coldness of death as their heads knocked together and their faces came into contact.They reeled, Byrne hugging Tom close to his breast in order not to let him fall with a crash.He had just strength enough to lower the awful burden gently to the floor - then his head swam, his legs gave way, and he sank on his knees, leaning over the body with his hands resting on the breast of that man once full of generous life, and now as insensible as a stone.

"Dead! my poor Tom, dead," he repeated mentally.The light of the lamp standing near the edge of the table fell from above straight on the stony empty stare of these eyes which naturally had a mobile and merry expression.

Byrne turned his own away from them.Tom's black silk neckerchief was not knotted on his breast.It was gone.The murderers had also taken off his shoes and stockings.And noticing this spoliation, the exposed throat, the bare up-turned feet, Byrne felt his eyes run full of tears.In other respects the seaman was fully dressed; neither was his clothing disarranged as it must have been in a violent struggle.Only his checked shirt had been pulled a little out the waistband in one place, just enough to ascertain whether he had a money belt fastened round his body.Byrne began to sob into his handkerchief.

It was a nervous outburst which passed off quickly.Remaining on his knees he contemplated sadly the athletic body of as fine a seaman as ever had drawn a cutlass, laid a gun, or passed the weather earring in a gale, lying stiff and cold, his cheery, fearless spirit departed - perhaps turning to him, his boy chum, to his ship out there rolling on the grey seas off an iron-bound coast, at the very moment of its flight.