Chapter 15

EXPECTATION.

As soon as I recover my senses I find myself lying on my bed in my
cell, where it appears I have been lying for thirty-six hours.

I am not alone. Engineer Serko is near me. He has attended to me
himself, not because he regards me as a friend, I surmise, but as
a man from whom indispensable explanations are awaited, and who
afterwards can be done away with if necessary.

I am still so weak that I could not walk a step. A little more and I
should have been asphyxiated in that narrow compartment of the _Sword_
at the bottom of the lagoon.

Am I in condition to reply to the questions that Engineer Serko is
dying to put to me? Yes--but I shall maintain the utmost reserve.

In the first place I wonder what has become of Lieutenant Davon and
the crew of the _Sword_. Did those brave Englishmen perish in the
collision? Are they safe and sound like us--for I suppose that Thomas
Roch has also survived?

The first question that Engineer Serko puts to me is this:

"Will you explain to me what happened, Mr. Hart?"

Instead of replying it occurs to me to question him myself.

"And Thomas Roch?" I inquire.

"In good health, Mr. Hart." Then he adds in an imperious tone: "Tell
me what occurred!"

"In the first place, tell me what became of the others."

"What others?" replies Serko, glancing at me savagely.

"Why, those men who threw themselves upon Thomas Roch and me, who
gagged, bound, and carried us off and shut us up, I know not where?"

On reflection I had come to the conclusion that the best thing to do
was to pretend that I had been surprised before I knew where I was or
who my aggressors were.

"You will know what became of them later. But first, tell me how, the
thing was done."

By the threatening tone of his voice, as he for the third time puts
this question, I understand the nature of the suspicions entertained
of me. Yet to be in the position to accuse me of having had relations
with the outside he would have had to get possession of my keg. This
he could not have done, seeing that it is in the hands of the Bermudan
authorities. The pirates cannot, I am convinced, have a single proof
to back up their suspicions.

I therefore recount how about eight o'clock on the previous evening I
was walking along the edge of the lagoon, after Thomas Roch had passed
me, going towards his laboratory, when I felt myself seized from
behind; how having been gagged, bound, and blindfolded, I felt myself
carried off and lowered into a hole with another person whom I thought
I recognized from his groans as Thomas Roch; how I soon felt that I
was on