Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1912 — The Pool of Flame [ARTICLE]

The Pool of Flame

By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

Bhutratieaa by EUawwrth Yoaaf

Copyright 1909, by Louis Joseph Vance CHAPTER XXV. Mrs. Prynne, roused out of her semistupor by) O’Rourke’s cry, with some return of her habitual clearness of thought, stepped to the companionway and called for her maid. O’Rourke passed a hand over his eyes, and brought it away black with blood, but was no more than half aware of this. Dazed and heart-brok-en, he stared blankly round the shambles that was the deck, then, recovering slightly, saw Cecile join her mistress, and realized that, whatever his personal grief, pain and despair, he must play the part of the O’Rourke. So he turned and staggered down into the saloon. Danny was in his berth, sleeping the childlike and loglike sleep that was ever his. Dravos, below, his ears deafened by the mighty chant of his engines, bad been no more conscious of the drama on deck than had Danny. O’Rourke caught the boy with hands that gripped his shoulders cruelly, and shook him awake, then methodically booted him up the steps to the deck. Once there, Danny came to his proper senses and fell with a will to the taqks O’Rourke set for him. With Cecile he lifted the unconscious captain and hore him down to his berth, then left him to the ministrations of mistress and maid and returned to throw overboard the last corpse, that of the lascar whom the serang had set to slay the adventurer from behind. O’Rourke himself proceeded to the bridge, where he found the helmsman still at the wheel, soberly keeping the vessel on her course. The circumstance at the time surprised him; but it afterwards was developed by dint of cross-examination of the remainder of the crew that the serang had specially exempted Quick and Dravos from the general massacre, they being held necessary to the navigation of the ship. He had likewise put strict Injuctlons on the helmsman not to desert the wheel, whatever the tide of battle, whether for or against his brethren. The stabbing of Quick seemed to have been accidental, or necessary under circumstances unforeseen. . As a matter of fact, the remainder of the lascars were thoroughly cowed and proved unbelievably docile for the balance of the trip. Thus it was that the voyage of the Ranee from Aden to Bombay was pushed through without further fatality. To the Irishman, however, must go more than half the credit; for for-ty-eight hours he never left the bridge nor once closed his eyes in slumber. It was not Indeed until the Ranee, of the fifteenth day of June, walked smartly into Bombay harbor, the international code signal “NJ” fluttering from her peak, rounded Colabra and dropped anchor off the point; not until Danny and Dravos, free at length from their toil in the broiling engineroom, came qp deck to relieve him, that O'Rourke collapsed—stumbled down the bridge ladder and lurched drunkenly down the saloon companionway. His head humming with ‘‘sleep, his brain bemused with fatigue and pain, his eyes heavy, he brushed by Mrs. Prynne without seeing her or even hearing her low cry of pity and solicitude; and so entering the first stateroom that he came to, threw himself, already asleep, into the berth. As he did so a loaded revolver dropped from his numb fingers. . . (To be continued