“And I’m going to take them,” said Kettle grimly.  “You may watch me handle the risks now with your own eyes, if you wish.”

He went down off the bridge, walked along the clean decks, and came to where a poor wretch lay in the last stage of small-pox collapse.  He examined the man carefully.  “My friend,” he said at last, “you’ve not got long for this world, anyway, and I want to borrow your last moments.  I suppose you won’t like to shift, but it’s in a good cause, and anyway you can’t object.”

He stooped and lifted the loathsome bundle in his arms, and then, in spite of a cry of expostulation from Nilssen, walked off with his burden to Rabeira’s room.

The Portuguese captain was in his bunk, trying to sleep.  He was sober for the first time for many days, and, in consequence, feeling not a little ill.

Kettle deposited his charge with carefulness on the littered settee, and Rabeira started up with a wild scream of fright and a babble of oaths.  Kettle shut and locked the door.

“Now look here,” he said, “you’ve earned more than you’ll ever get paid in this life, and there’s a tolerably heavy bill against you for the next.  It looks to me as if it would be a good thing if you went off there to settle up the account right now.  But I’m not going to take upon myself to be your hangman.  I’m just going to give you a chance of pegging out, and I sincerely hope you’ll take it.  I’ve brought our friend here to be your room mate for the evening.  It’s just about nightfall now, and you’ve got to stay with him till daybreak.”

“You coward!” hissed the man.  “You coward!  You coward!” he screamed.

“Think so?” said Kettle gravely.  “Then if that’s your idea, I’ll stay here in the room, too, and take my risks.  God’s seen the game, and I’ll guess He’ll hand over the beans fairly.”

Perspiration stood in beads on all their faces.  The room, the one unclean room of the ship, was full of breathless heat, and stale with the lees of drink.  Kettle, in his spruce-white drill clothes, stood out against the squalor and the disorder, as a mirror might upon a coal-heap.

The Portuguese captain, with nerves smashed by his spell of debauch, played a score of parts.  First he was aggressive, asserting his rights as a man and the ship’s master, and demanding the key of the door.  Then he was warlike, till his frenzied attack earned him such a hiding that he was glad enough to crawl back on to the mattress of his bunk.  Then he was beseeching.  And then he began to be troubled with zoological hauntings, which occupied him till the baking air cooled with the approach of the dawn.

The smitten negro on the settee gave now and then a moan, but for the most part did his dying with quietness.  Had Kettle deliberately worked for that purpose, he could not have done anything more calculated to make the poor wretch’s last moments happy.

“Oh, Massa!” he kept on whispering, “too-much-fine room.  You plenty-much good for let me lib for die heah.”  And then he would relapse into barbaric chatterings more native to his taste, and fitting to his condition.