"Don't, sir! Don't touch it."
The captain pushed aside Powell's extended arm, took up the glass and
raised it slowly against the lamplight. The liquid, of very pale amber
colour, was clear, and by a glance the captain seemed to call Powell's
attention to the fact. Powell tried to pronounce the word, "dissolved"
but he only thought of it with great energy which however failed to move
his lips. Only when Anthony had put down the glass and turned to him he
recovered such a complete command of his voice that he could keep it down
to a hurried, forcible whisper--a whisper that shook him.
"Doctored! I swear it! I have seen. Doctored! I have seen."
Not a feature of the captain's face moved. His was a calm to take one's
breath away. It did so to young Powell. Then for the first time Anthony
made himself heard to the point.
"You did! . . . Who was it?"
And Powell gasped freely at last. "A hand," he whispered fearfully, "a
hand and the arm--only the arm--like that."
He advanced his own, slow, stealthy, tremulous in faithful reproduction,
the tips of two fingers and the thumb pressed together and hovering above
the glass for an instant--then the swift jerk back, after the deed.
"Like that," he repeated growing excited. "From behind this." He
grasped the curtain and glaring at the silent Anthony flung it back
disclosing the forepart of the saloon. There was on one to be seen.
Powell had not expected to see anybody. "But," he said to me, "I knew
very well there was an ear listening and an eye glued to the crack of a
cabin door. Awful thought. And that door was in that part of the saloon
remaining in the shadow of the other half of the curtain. I pointed at
it and I suppose that old man inside saw me pointing. The captain had a
wonderful self-command. You couldn't have guessed anything from his
face. Well, it was perhaps more thoughtful than usual. And indeed this
was something to think about. But I couldn't think steadily. My brain
would give a sort of jerk and then go dead again. I had lost all notion
of time, and I might have been looking at the captain for days and months
for all I knew before I heard him whisper to me fiercely: "Not a word!"
This jerked me out of that trance I was in and I said "No! No! I didn't
mean even you."