The night was not a cheerful one, and morning came gloomily out of a gray bank of mist.Cleggett, as he looked about the boat in the first pale light, could not resist a slight feeling of depression, courageous as he was.The wounded man gibbered in a bunk in the forecastle.The box ofReginald Maltravers stood on one end, leaning against the port side of the cabin, and dripped steadily.Elmer, wrapped in blankets, lay on the deck near the box of Reginald Maltravers, looking even more dejected in slumber than when his eyes were open.Teddy, the Pomeranian, was snuggled against Elmer's feet, but, as if a prey to frightful nightmares, the little dog twitched and whined in his sleep from time to time.These were the apparent facts, and these facts were set to a melancholy tune by the long-drawn, dismal snores of Cap'n Abernethy, which rose and fell, and rose and fell, and rose again like the sad and wailing song of some strange bird bereft of a beloved mate.They were the music for, and the commentary on, what Cleggett beheld; Cap'n Abernethy seemed to be saying, with these snores: "If you was to ask me, I'd say it ain't a cheerful ship this mornin', Mr.Cleggett, it ain't a cheerful ship."But Cleggett's nature was too lively and vigorous to remain clouded for long.By the time the red disk of the sun had crept above the eastern horizon he had shaken off his fit of the blues.
The sun looked large and bland and friendly, and, somehow, the partisan of integrity and honor.He drew strength from it.Cleggett, like all poetic souls, was responsive to these familiar recurrent phenomena of nature.
The sun did him another office.It showed him a peculiar tableau vivant on the eastern bank of the canal, near the house boat Annabel Lee.This consisted of three men, two of them naked except for bathing trunks of the most abbreviated sort, running swiftly and earnestly up and down the edge of the canal.He saw with astonishment that the two men in bathing suits were handcuffed together, the left wrist of one to the right wrist of the other.A rope was tied to the handcuffs, and the other end of it was held by the third man, who was dressed in ordinary tweeds.The third man had a magazine rifle over one shoulder.He followed about twenty feet behind the two men in bathing suits and drove them.
Cleggett perceived that the man who was doing the driving was the same who had watched the Jasper B.so persistently the day before fromthe deck of the Annabel Lee.He was middle-sized, and inclined to be stout, and yet he followed his strange team with no apparent effort.Cleggett saw through the glass that he had a rather heavy black mustache, and was again struck by something vaguely familiar about him.The two men in bathing suits were slender and undersized; they did not look at all like athletes, and although they moved as fast as they could it was apparent that they got no pleasure out of it.They ran with their heads hanging down, and it seemed to Cleggett that they were quarreling as they ran, for occasionally one of them would give a vicious jerk to the handcuffs that would almost upset the other, and that must have hurt the wrists of both of them.
As Cleggett watched, the driver pulled them up short, and waved them towards the canal.They stopped, and it was apparent that they were balking and expostulating.But the driver was inexorable.He went near to them and threatened their bare backs with the slack of the rope.Gingerly and shiveringly they stepped into the cold water, while the driver stood on the bank.The water was up to their waists and he had to threaten them again with his rope before they would duck their heads under.
When he allowed them on shore again they needed no urging, it was evident, to make them hit up a good rate of speed, and back and forth along the bank they sprinted.But the cold bath had not improved their temper, for suddenly one of them leaped and kicked sidewise at the other, with the result that both toppled to the ground.The stout man was upon them in an instant, hazing them with the rope end.He drove them, still lashing out at each other with their bare feet, into the water again, and after a more prolonged ducking whipped them, at a plunging gallop, upon the Annabel Lee, where they disappeared from Cleggett's view.
