The idea that he was poisoned grew upon Todd each moment, and to such a man, it was truly terrific to think that he should come to so fearful an end. "Help! Help!" he groaned; but after all, it was only a groan and not a cry—not that that mattered; for if he had had the lungs of ten men all concentrated in his own person, and had so been able to cry out with a superhuman voice, it would have been most completely lost amid the roar of the wind, and the wild dashing of the waves.
The storm was certainly increasing.
"Oh, this sickness!" groaned Todd. "Oh, dear—oh, dear!"
At the moment that he was so bad that, in his want of experience of what sea sickness really was, he thought every moment would be his last, he heard some one coming down into the cabin, and one of the crew rolled rather than walked into it.
"Help!" said Todd; "oh, help!"
"You go to the d—l!" said the man. "The captain is washed overboard, and we are all going to the bottom, so I am one who likes to take a little spirits with him to qualify the water that one may be obliged to swallow. That's it. Steady, craft, steady."
Practised as this man no doubt was in the art of keeping his footing upon an undulating surface, the pitching of the ship was so tremendous, that even he was thrown to the cabin floor with considerable violence, and had no easy task to rise again.
"No!" cried Todd, finding that positive fright lent him strength, "you do not mean that?"
"Mean what, you old sinner?"
"That we shall be lost?"
The man nodded, and having opened a little cupboard, he brought out a little bladder of spirits, and placing it to his lips, he drank a large quantity, while he held by the cupboard door to keep himself from falling.
"That will do," he said, as he dropped the bladder to the floor, and then, after several unsuccessful efforts to do so, he scrambled upon deck again.
"I, too, will drink," said Todd; "oh, yes, I will drink. I feel that if anything will give me strength to bear the horrors of the night, it will be my old and well-tried friend, brandy."
He cast his eyes upon the bladder of spirits that the sailor had thrown to the floor. The spirit was slowly weltering out of the bladder, and running in a stream across the cabin. As the odour of it saluted the nose of Todd, he exclaimed,—
"It is brandy! I must and will have some!"
It was all very well for Todd to say that he must and would have some of the brandy, but the difficulty of getting at it was one by no means easy to surmount. He recollected what a job he had to get into his berth again upon the occasion that he had got out of it before, and he dreaded to place himself in a similar predicament; yet he found the vessel was more steady, although the wind had not at all abated. Yes, it certainly was more steady.
"I will try," said Todd. "I must have some."
With a determination, then, to get at the choice liquor, which was wasting what Todd considered its sweetness upon the cabin floor, he slid out of his little bed-place, and the ship giving a sudden roll in a trough of the sea, he fell sprawling to the floor.
"Oh, I shall be killed!" he yelled. "This frightful voyage will be the death of me! It is too terrible! Oh, Heaven! It is much too terrible! Help!—mercy!"
Todd lay upon his back on the cabin floor, with his arms and legs stretched out like a gigantic St. Andrew's cross. Something touched his hand; it was the bladder of brandy, that, as the ship rolled, had moved towards him. He clutched it with a feeling of despair, and brought it to his lips.
With the exception of about half a pint, the brandy had made its way on to the cabin floor; but it was strong, pure spirit—such brandy, in fact, as smugglers might well reserve for their own private drinking; so that the half pint was a very tolerable dose to take at once, and Todd drained it to the last drop.
"Better!" he said; "oh, yes, I am better, now."
The fumes of the strong spirit mounted to his brain, and got the better, for the time, of that frightful feeling of sickness which had been so like death, that Todd had mistaken it for the last pangs that he was likely to feel in this world.
"Oh, yes, I am better. How the wind howls now, and how the waves dash the ship hither and thither. The deck, yes, the deck will be the place for me. Oh, gracious! what was that?"
A loud crash, and a scream from some drowning wretches who had gone overboard along with a mast, had broken upon his ears. Terror sat at his very heart, and unable any longer to endure the frightful suspense of being below, he tried, upon his hands and knees, to crawl upon the deck.
By no other mode could Todd have had the slightest hope or expectation of reaching the deck of that fated vessel, but as he tried it, he did, after a time, succeed in dragging himself up from the cabin. The sea was washing over the deck, and for a few moments he could see no one. He watched for a lull in the wind, and then he cried—
"Help! help! Oh, help!"
"Who's that?" shouted a voice.
"I!" said Todd.
"Go to blazes, then!"
"Oh, how kind!" groaned Todd. "How very considerate at such a time as this, too."
The wind that had lulled for a few moments, now came with a frightful gush, and Todd was glad to find the fragments of a quantity of cordage, belonging to some of the top parts of the mast that had gone overboard, to cling to till the gust had passed over the ship. Then there came some tons of salt water over him, and he was nearly bereft of the power of breathing.
"Oh, this is dreadful!" he said. "This is truly dreadful!"
"Hands off!" growled a voice. "Everybody for himself here. Hands off, I say."
"What do you mean?" said Todd. "Do you speak to me?"
The voice had sounded close to him; and now again, with an angry tone, it cried—
"Some one has got hold of my leg!"
"............