I am almost certain that not one of the three of us made any outcry, or even uttered a word, so paralyzing was the effect of the apparition at the wheel. The first sound I definitely recall as breaking in upon those muffled mowings from the cockpit was a booming gasp as Ranga's mighty chest sucked in a lungful of air, and then the big Malay's quiet "'Scuse me, Tuan," as he started to shove past between me and the deckhouse.
The yellow giant had seen too many men, white and black, lose their minds and their lives on that reeking old schooner to let the snapping of one more brain, or the parting of one more life-line, ruffle unduly his solid Oriental composure. He had been fond of Allen, however, and I could see that he was shaken, though not, like the rest of us, unnerved. There was a rumble of concern and anxiety even in that respectful "'Scuse me, Tuan," as he started to push past the blockade the cowering forms of three lesser men had made in the narrow passage.
Ranga's steadiness was good for the rest of us. Butler checked the Malay with upraised hand and, muttering something about his duty as a doctor, started aft, the _Herald_ man and I pushing in his wake. If it had been possible for the fear-distorted features of the wreck of "Slant" Allen to express extremer terror, that heightened degree was registered when Butler extended his opened clasp-knife to begin severing the lashings. I have no wish to attempt to describe that hell-haunted face. Indeed, there will be scant need of my doing so, for there can be few readers of this record who are not already familiar with its tortured lineaments. It seared itself into my brain with a white heat of intensity that left no room for any other image. At the moment it seemed as though it must be blazoned there as long as my body was quick with the spark of life, or at least until my reason recoiled at the horror of it and tottered from its throne. A little later, when the dread face itself had been hidden from my sight, a light seemed suddenly to flash out in the distance, and in groping toward it I found relief.
The ghastly shadow of the Hon. Hartley Allen was standing wedged in between the wheel and the binnacle-stand, his wrists lashed to the spokes of the former and a maze of tangled line binding his knees to the latter. The lashing was a length cut from the taffrail-log-line, another piece of which had been used to secure a gag of wadded oakum. The only wound visible (save for the wrists chafed through to the white cords of their tendons in his desperate tuggings to tear free) was a half-inch-wide incision on the right inner side of the neck, evidently made by the point of a knife pressed in close to the swell of the jugular vein. As this cut was hardly more than a deep prick, it seemed probable that the knife had been used, not to inflict injury, but rather to compel the victim to remain quiet while he was being secured.