At any moment he might remember that the Brazilians who held him could not understand a word he said.
Poltavo gave an order, and the struggling man was flung to the deck.
"Murder!" he screamed. "Hyatt, and the other man! And poor Morson and Kohr. I see the blood on his pillow! and a time-fuse in the magazine----"
Baggin thrust a handkerchief in his mouth.
"Chloroform," he said in Spanish. "Our friend has been drinking."
In a few seconds, the captain was back with a bottle of colourless liquid, and a saturated handkerchief was pressed over the struggling man's mouth.
He was silent at last, and, at a word from their captain, the men who held him released their hold, and went forward to their quarters. The captain discreetly followed them.
The two men stood in silence, gazing down at the huddled figure. Then, "He must go," said Baggin.
"I see your point," he said, with biting emphasis. "With the others"--he wet his dry lips--"you cast the black vote fast enough----"
The count elevated his eyebrows. "Why refer to such things?" he objected mildly. "If they be necessary--do them, swiftly and well--but be silent, even as Nature is silent. For Mr. Grayson, he is--how you say--a very sick man. Perhaps----" He shrugged his shoulders and did not finish the sentence.
"Lend a hand," he said quietly to Baggin.
The American obeyed, sullenly, and, between them, they half supported, half carried Grayson to his cabin.
To a calm sea, to a dawn all pearl and rose, the crew of the _Maria Braganza_ woke. In the night, the speed of the warship had been accelerated until she was moving at her top speed, and two columns of black smoke belched from her great funnels. The two men who came on deck at the same moment did not speak one to the other. Baggin was pale; there were dark circles about his eyes; he looked like a man who had not slept. But Count Poltavo was unperturbed.
Clear-eyed, shaven, not unusually pallid, he woke as from a pleasant dream, and appeared on deck immaculate from point of shoe to fingernail.
All the morning preparations were going on. Ammunition came up from the magazine, dilatory quartermasters swung out guns; on the masthead was an under-officer armed with a telescope.
He was the principal object of interest to the men on the quarter-deck. Every few minutes their eyes would go sweeping aloft.