Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/290

278 I had a revolver in my hand. The boat gave a lurch. The trigger must have caught my coat sleeve. It snapped. There was a flash. A report. One of his snakes straightened itself out against the blackness like a streaming ribbon. You could see it gleam for a moment. Then it vanished. I suppose it dropped into the sea. A good thing too. The idea was that it had been hit by that unintentional shot. I can only say that if that was the case it was the victim of something very like a miracle.

Old Batters understood what had happened long before I did. He came down that rigging like ten mad monkeys. And he went for me like twenty. If the watch hadn’t been there he’d have sent me after that snake. It took the lot of us to get the best of him. If the men had had their way they’d have dropped him overboard.

I wished I had let them before I finished

A more artful old dodger never breathed. I drew up the agreement of the spoils; but it was days before I could get him to set his hand to it. At first he pretended he couldn’t write. As it happened I had seen him write. It seemed to me he was always writing. When at last I had induced him to sign, in the presence of Luke, Rudd, and Holley, he eluded me on the subject of the inventory. I could not get one. His stock of excuses was inexhaustible. And they were all so plausible. It is true that I made notes of a good many things without his knowledge. But a formal inventory I never had. As to my suggestion that at least the more valuable things should be removed to my cabin for safe custody, when I renewed it he expressed his willingness on conditions that he went with them, and his snakes. I declined. On those terms I preferred that he should remain custodian.

Then there was his intimacy with Luke. That continued, in spite of my attempts to stop it. Though