The poor friends were shocked and sickened by this horrible piece of foresight. But Colonel Kenealy said, with tears, in his eyes, that his old friend should never be buried like a kitten. “Then you had better ask Sharpe to give me an order for a barrel of spirits,” said the surgeon. “Yes, yes, for two if you like. Oh, don't die, Dodd, my poor old fellow. How shall I ever face his wife--I remember her, the loveliest girl you ever saw--with such a tale as this? She will think it a cruel thing I should come out of it without a scratch, and a ten times better man to be dead: and so it is; it is cruel, it is unjust, it is monstrous; him to be lying there, and we muffs to be sitting croaking over him and watching for his last breath like three cursed old ravens.” And the stout colonel groaned aloud. When the surgeon left them, they fell naturally upon another topic, the pledge they had given Dodd about the L. 14,000. They ascertained it was upon him, next his skin; but it seemed as unnecessary as it was repugnant to remove it from his living person. They agreed, however, that instantly on his decease they would take possession of it, note the particulars, seal it up, and carry it to Mrs. Dodd, with such comfort as they could hope to give her by relating the gallant act in which his precious life was lost. At 9 P.M. the surgeon took his place by Dodd's bedside; and the pair, whom one thing after another had drawn so close together, retired to Kenealy's cabin. Many a merry chat they had had there, and many a gaseonade, being rival hunters; but now they were together for physical companionship in sorrow rather than for conversation. They smoked their cigars in moody silence, and at midnight shook hands with a sigh and parted. That sigh meant to say that in the morning all would be over. They turned in; but, ere either of them was asleep, suddenly the captain's cabin seemed to fill with roars and shrieks of wild beasts, that made the whole ship ring in the silent night The savage cries were answered on deck by shouts of dismay and many pattering feet making for the companion ladder; but the nearest persons to the cabin, and the first to reach it, were Kenealy and Fullalove, who burst in, the former with a drawn sword, the latter with a revolver, both in their nightgowns; and there saw a sight that took their breath away. The surgeon was not there; and two black men, one with a knife, and one with his bare claws, were fighting and struggling and trampling all over the cabin at once, and the dying man sitting up in his cot, pale, and glaring at them. CHAPTER XI