Part 40 (1/2)
With ear pressed close to the combination, he turned it slowly, by delicate degrees, waiting for the telltale click. They saw him set his teeth and grow eager as a hound on a scent of blood; they saw the fingers move rapidly and nervously, and then came a click which was audible through the entire room, and the door of the safe swung open.
Still no one stirred, no one breathed. He took out a small canvas bag, he untied the top, he spilled the contents out, and then they saw bright gold, gold which inspires, and gold which destroys, gold the tempter and the murderer.
A wild scramble followed. They swept the gold up in handfuls and tossed it into the air, laughing like madmen as the light gleamed on the yellow surfaces. And at length when they were wearied of touching it and caressing it, Hovey apportioned the spoils: to Cochrane, by common a.s.sent, the ten shares, a fortune; to Sam Hall, Kyle, and Flint, two shares each, for they had been leaders in the fight; to himself ten shares, also by universal voice, and to each of the others, forty in all, his portion.
There was no fighting or complaint over the division of the spoils.
What difference did a few hundred pieces here or there matter? Gold in floods, gold in oceans, was before them, and each man gathered his own share close.
But where there is gold there is death. One of the firemen said in the ear of Hovey: ”The second a.s.sistant--Fritz Klopp--he is dying.”
It was upon Klopp that they depended for the running of the Heron.
Hovey merely laughed: ”Carry him in here. He'll come to life when he sees this!”
They had left Klopp lying on the deck. He had been one of the first to leap at White Henshaw, and a bullet from the captain's revolver had torn its way through his lungs; his eyes were glazing fast when two of the firemen carried him into the outer cabin of White Henshaw and placed him in an armchair beside the desk.
”How are you, Klopp?” asked Hovey.
”I am dying,” answered the engineer, and a faint pink froth bubbled to his lips as he spoke.
Hovey merely laughed; he spilled Klopp's share of the gold across the surface of the table, a gleaming pile.
”How are you, Klopp?” he repeated.
”I will live,” croaked the dying man, and instantly his clutches were among the hundreds of coins, and his red mouth grinned with a ghastly joy. He had forgotten death.
”You will live!” rumbled Sam Hall. ”A man would be a fool to die when there's so much money in sight. Where's your hurt?”
”I have no hurt,” whispered Klopp hoa.r.s.ely, ”but I'm on fire inside.
Water! Something to drink!”
”Something to drink, but not water,” responded Hovey. ”Hey, Kamasura!
Drink! Whisky!”
Instantly Kamasura, who had evidently antic.i.p.ated the order, came staggering into the room with a literal armful of bottles. Hovey himself brought a gla.s.s and placed it in the hand of Klopp and filled it to the brim.
”Drink!” shouted Hovey, and sprang upon a chair so that all might see him. ”Drink to Fritz Klopp! White Henshaw potted him, but he laughs at death, and he'll bring the old _Heron_ to sh.o.r.e. Here's to Fritz Klopp!”
Many a gla.s.s was raised high. They drank with a shout of applause to Fritz Klopp, who sat without stirring his gla.s.s, one hand upon it, and the other buried among the heaps of gold, his head resting against the back of the chair, and his red mouth still ajar in that horrible grin.
”What ye laughin' at?” yelled Sam Hall in his ear. ”Are ye drunk at the sight of the money, man?”
There was no answer. Hall caught him by the shoulder to rouse him, but Klopp's head merely sagged far to one side, though his glazed eyes still seemed to be fixed upward upon the same spot on the ceiling at which he had been staring before.
”What is it?” cried one or two. ”What does he see?”
”Death, you fools!” answered Hovey. ”And how the devil will we bring the _Heron_ to land without an engineer?”
CHAPTER 33