"One of us has to do it, but it can't be me, Harrigan." "Nor me, Angus. We'll wait till tonight. Maybe a ship'll pass and see us lyin' like a derelict and put a boat aboard, eh?" "But if no ship comes, then we'll draw straws, eh?" "Yes." Two sharp, sudden cries now called their attention back to the waist of the ship to the blood-stained hatch cover where Van Roos lay. Sam Hall had approached the big mate with a knife in his hand. He kneeled beside the prostrate body and fumbled at the face an instant. No one had been able to make out the significance of his act. Then the knife gleamed, and twice he plucked with one hand and cut with the knife. The two sharp cries answered him. Then he rose; two little trickles of blood ran down the face of the mate. "Well?" asked Jacob Flint. "When does the game begin?" "The game is just started," said Hall, "an' the sun will do the rest. I've cut off his eyelids!" They stared a moment in amazement, and then an understanding broke on them. Every tribe of savages in the world has been accredited with this ingenious torture which blinded their victim and usually drove him mad. The sun was now climbing the sky rapidly, and already fell on the face of the mate. The tropic sun which scorches and burns the toughest of skins was now directed full on the pupils of his eyes. The sailors sought comfortable positions and waited for a long exhibition of pain, but they were mistaken. The torture acted far more quickly than even the whip. There was no outcry. Not once during his struggles did Van Roos make a sound from his throat, save for a quick, heavy panting. Perhaps by contrast with the yells of Borgson, which were still in the ears of the men, this silence was more horrible than the most throat-filling shrieks. They could see Van Roos twisting his head ceaselessly and vainly to escape that blinding light. His ruddy face became swollen like the features of a drowned man. And that was all that happened--only that, and the panting, the quick, choppy panting like a running man. Finally one of the sailors rose with a mallet in his hand. "Where you goin'?" asked Hall ominously. "Going to finish him." Hall caught the fellow's arm. "Listen!" he whispered, and such was the silence that the hoarse whisper was audible all over the deck. "Don't you hear?" And with one hand he kept beat for the quick breaths of the tortured man. At that moment there was a long sigh, and the breathing stopped. Hall strode angrily forward to his victim, but when he reached the hatch, Van Roos was dead. A blood vessel must have burst in his brain, and death was as instantaneous as though a bullet had struck him. So they cut him free, and his body followed that of Borgson over the rail. Then the eyes of the mutineers turned aft toward the wireless house, and then back upon Campbell. Six victims remained. One of the firemen slipped close to Hovey on naked feet. He did not speak, but his long, thin arm pointed toward the engineer.