Save for the piles of staves and heaps of hoops there
was absolutely nothing in it, with the exception of the mattress for the
Doctor, which had been laid in the corner. We made a couple of seats and
a table out of the staves, and settled down together for a long vigil. Severall had brought a revolver for me, and was himself armed with a
double-barrelled shot-gun. We loaded our weapons and laid them cocked
within reach of our hands. The little circle of light and the black
shadows arching over us were so melancholy that he went off to the
house, and returned with two candles. One side of the cooperage was
pierced, however, by several open windows, and it was only by screening
our lights behind staves that we could prevent them from being
extinguished. The Doctor, who appeared to be a man of iron nerves, had settled down to
a book, but I observed that every now and then he laid it upon his knee,
and took an earnest look all round him. For my part, although I tried
once or twice to read, I found it impossible to concentrate my thoughts
upon the book. They would always wander back to this great empty silent
room, and to the sinister mystery which overshadowed it. I racked my
brains for some possible theory which would explain the disappearance of
these two men. There was the black fact that they were gone, and not the
least tittle of evidence as to why or whither. And here we were waiting
in the same place—waiting without an idea as to what we were waiting
for. I was right in saying that it was not a one-man job. It was trying
enough as it was, but no force upon earth would have kept me there
without a comrade. What an endless, tedious night it was! Outside we heard the lapping and
gurgling of the great river, and the soughing of the rising wind. Within, save for our breathing, the turning of the Doctor’s pages, and
the high, shrill ping of an occasional mosquito, there was a heavy
silence. Once my heart sprang into my mouth as Severall’s book suddenly
fell to the ground and he sprang to his feet with his eyes on one of the
windows. “Did you see anything, Meldrum?”

“No. Did you?”

“Well, I had a vague sense of movement outside that window.” He caught
up his gun and approached it. “No, there’s nothing to be seen, and yet I
could have sworn that something passed slowly across it.”

“A palm leaf, perhaps,” said I, for the wind was growing stronger every
instant. “Very likely,” said he, and settled down to his book again, but his eyes
were for ever darting little suspicious glances up at the window. I
watched it also, but all was quiet outside. And then suddenly our thoughts were turned into a new direction by the
bursting of the storm. A blinding flash was followed by a clap which
shook the building. Again and again came the vivid white glare with
thunder at the same instant, like the flash and roar of a monstrous
piece of artillery. And then down came the tropical rain, crashing and
rattling on the corrugated iron roofing of the cooperage. The big hollow
room boomed like a drum. From the darkness arose a strange mixture of
noises, a gurgling, splashing, tinkling, bubbling, washing,
dripping—every liquid sound that nature can produce from the thrashing
and swishing of the rain to the deep steady boom of the river. Hour
after hour the uproar grew louder and more sustained. “My word,” said Severall, “we are going to have the father of all the
floods this time. Well, here’s the dawn coming at last and that is a
blessing. We’ve about exploded the third night superstition anyhow.”

A grey light was stealing through the room, and there was the day upon
us in an instant. The rain had eased off, but the coffee-coloured river
was roaring past like a waterfall. Its power made me fear for the anchor
of the _Gamecock_. “I must get aboard,” said I. “If she drags she’ll never be able to beat
up the river again.”

“The island is as good as a breakwater,” the Doctor answered. “I can
give you a cup of coffee if you will come up to the house.”

I was chilled and miserable, so the suggestion was a welcome one. We
left the ill-omened cooperage with its mystery still unsolved, and we
splashed our way up to the house. “There’s the spirit lamp,” said Severall. “If you would just put a light
to it, I will see how Walker feels this morning.”

He left me, but was back in an instant with a dreadful face. “He’s gone!” he cried hoarsely. The words sent a thrill of horror through me. I stood with the lamp in
my hand, glaring at him. “Yes, he’s gone!” he repeated. “Come and look!”

I followed him without a word, and the first thing that I saw as I
entered the bedroom was Walker himself lying huddled on his bed in the
grey flannel sleeping suit in which I had helped to dress him on the
night before. “Not dead, surely!” I gasped. The Doctor was terribly agitated. His hands were shaking like leaves in
the wind. “He’s been dead some hours.”

“Was it fever?”

“Fever! Look at his foot!”

I glanced down and a cry of horror burst from my lips. One foot was not
merely dislocated but was turned completely round in a most grotesque
contortion. “Good God!” I cried. “What can have done this?”

Severall had laid his hand upon the dead man’s chest. “Feel here,” he whispered. I placed my hand at the same spot. There was no resistance. The body was
absolutely soft and limp. It was like pressing a sawdust doll. “The breast-bone is gone,” said Severall in the same awed whisper. “He’s
broken to bits. Thank God that he had the laudanum. You can see by his
face that he died in his sleep.”

“But who can have done this?”

“I’ve had about as much as I can stand,” said the Doctor, wiping his
forehead. “I don’t know that I’m a greater coward than my neighbours,
but this gets beyond me. If you’re going out to the _Gamecock_——”

“Come on!” said I, and off we started. If we did not run it was because
each of us wished to keep up the last shadow of his self-respect before
the other. It was dangerous in a light canoe on that swollen river, but
we never paused to give the matter a thought. He bailing and I paddling
we kept her above water, and gained the deck of the yacht. There, with
two hundred yards of water between us and this cursed island, we felt
that we were our own men once more. “Well go back in an hour or so,” said he. “But we need a little time to
steady ourselves. I wouldn’t have had the niggers see me as I was just
now for a year’s salary.”

“I’ve told the steward to prepare breakfast. Then we shall go back,”
said I. “But in God’s name, Doctor Severall, what do you make of it
all?”

“It beats me—beats me clean. I’ve heard of Voodoo devilry, and I’ve
laughed at it with the others. But that poor old Walker, a decent,
God-fearing, nineteenth-century, Primrose-League Englishman should go
under like this without a whole bone in his body—it’s given me a shake,
I won’t deny it.