There was but one thing to be done: he must gain the schooner with all
possible speed, at any risk, and take immediate steps for Jack's rescue.
Instinctively he shaped his course for the Elephant's head. The
precipitous cliff was there skirted by a narrow beach. He had seen it
gleaming above the surf-line while rounding the island on the morning of
their arrival. This beach would afford a short-cut to the front of the
island, off which the schooner lay. Once there, he must swim for it.
These were his thoughts as he ran.
Tough work it was. True, the jungle did not grow close up to the base of
the cliff; but here and there yawning _nullahs_, of considerable depth,
and with sides almost as-steep as walls, had been cut across his pathway
by the rains. At intervals, too, he encountered rugged, irregular heaps
of stones, fallen from the cliff above, and studded thick with thorny
clumps of prickly-pear.
The cutlass at his side impeded his progress. He threw it away. Then on
again.
The sands at last! Close on his right lay the sea, close on his left
rose the beetling cliff. There was not much room--just enough to run in.
Away before him, like a narrow ribbon of burnished silver, stretched
the smooth, hard sands, with never a living thing in sight on all their
gleaming reach.
Gradually the cliffs crept behind, and the seafront opened out before
him. And now, of a sudden, he espied a group of natives making for the
beach--a company of fishermen, laden with creels, and oars, and nets.
Just ahead, a wedge-shaped gully split the low bank that bordered the
beach on the landward side. Above this bank were the fishermen, heading
for the gully. They were perhaps fifty yards short of it, while he,
on the beach below the bank, was a full hundred. Should they reach it
first, he would certainly be intercepted; whereas, could he but pass the
point of danger ere' the natives gained it, he might succeed in eluding
them. They did not see him yet. He darted under the bank, and ran as he
had never run in all his life before.
Seventy-five yards, fifty yards, twenty yards--and then the gully. Had
the natives reached it? As he raced past he darted a swift sidelong
glance at the _nullah_. The fishermen were already halfway down it. They
saw him, dropped their fishing implements, and gave chase, yelling like
a pack of fiends.
On and on he ran, looking back but once to ascertain what start he had
of the dusky gang. Twenty yards at least. They were just emerging from
the bottom of the gully.
And now, away to the right, he sighted the schooner, riding at anchor
with half a mile of sea between her holding-ground and the shore. He
could see her boats swinging at the davits. They had not sighted him,
then. He wondered whether Jack could see him from the cliff.
Jack caught sight of Don as he raced past the gully. The fishermen,
as it happened, were just then in the gully itself, and consequently
invisible. Don's appearance he hailed with a shout.
“Hurrah! he hasn't lost much time, anyhow.”
This exclamation brought both Spottie and Puggles to his side in hot
haste. The stairs were thus left unguarded--a step the imprudence of
which was wholly overlooked in the excitement of the moment.
At sight of his master tearing along the beach below, a grim
delight--not unmixed with anxiety--overspread Puggles' black
countenance, while a chuckle of intense satisfaction welled up from the
red abyss of his fat, shiny throat. Then, like the shadow of an April
cloud driven swiftly across a sunlit meadow, a look of blank dismay
eclipsed the grin, the chuckle died away in a gasp of alarm, and
pointing to the beach with shaking finger, he cried:
“Sar! sar! black warmints done catch um, sar!”
His alarm was well-founded. The fishermen had just tumbled out of the
gully, at Don's very heels, as it seemed at this distance.
“They're after him, sure enough,” cried Jack. “By Jove, how he runs! Go
it, old fellow! you've got the start of them, anyhow.”
Away went Don, running like a deer, and after him pelted the fishermen,
in a headlong, rough-and-tumble, happy-go-lucky fashion, that, under
circumstances less serious, must have provoked the spectators on the
Rock to hearty laughter. No laughing matter this, however; for Don's
pursuers, having thrown aside their fishing gear, and being moreover
fresh in wind and limb, were seen to gain on him at every stride. The
race could not prolong itself for many minutes now, and the finish--Jack
shuddered, as he thought of what that must be.
At this critical juncture, too, matters took an unexpected turn for the
worse. A short distance up the beach a second party of natives appeared
on the scene. Don ran straight on, apparently not perceiving them. They,
on the contrary, saw him, and bore down upon him swiftly. Their cries,
doubtless, warned him of his danger, for now he pulled up short, looked
ahead, glanced quickly over his shoulder, and then-----
With a groan Jack turned away.
A loud outcry from the blacks, however, drew his gaze seawards again,
and as he looked his pulses thrilled. Don was making straight for the
surf!
As often happens on these coasts when the wind is but a whisper, and
the sea glass-like in its placidity, a heavy ground-swell was rolling
sullenly in from the outer bay. A stone's throw from the shore this
swell was but a sinuous, almost imperceptible, undulation of the glassy
surface; but as it swept towards the beach, where the water shoaled
rapidly, of a sudden it reared aloft a crest of hissing foam, which
curled higher and higher as it came on, until it overtopped the sands
at the height of a boat's mast. Then with a mighty roar it broke, hurled
itself far up the shelving sands, and retired, seething, to make room
for the green battalions pressing shorewards in its wake.
Straight towards this living wall of water Don ran. The two bands of
natives, uniting their forces as they swerved aside like bloodhounds in
pursuit, were close upon him. Before, above him, curled the mighty wave;
and then, to his great horror, Jack saw him stumble and fall.
Lucky fall! Ere the natives could throw themselves upon him, the combing
wave broke, passed directly over his prostrate body, swept the niggers
off their legs, and hurled them with irresistible force far up the
beach.
A moment later the breathless watchers on the cliff saw a black object
floating on the surface of the water, yards from shore. It was Don. The
under-tow had swept him out to sea, beyond his pursuers' reach.
An expert and powerful swimmer, he lost no time in increasing the
distance between himself and the disconcerted native crew, one or two of
whom attempted to overtake him, but soon gave it up for a bad job.
Then a boat put off from the schooner, and soon Jack had the
satisfaction of seeing his plucky friend hauled' in over her side. A
quarter of an hour later, when the boat had regained the schooner,
the signal gun once more boomed out over the sea, and with feelings of
devout thankfulness to Heaven Jack realised that Don was safe on board,
and that the term of his own and his companions' imprisonment on the
summit of the Rock was bounded by a few brief hours at the most.
Even as he looked, as if by magic the schooner's canvas swelled to the
breeze, and he caught the distant song of the lascars as they hove the
anchor to the cathead.
Hunger, thirst, his wound, the very enemy at the foot of the rock
stairs--all had been forgotten in the breathless interest inspired by
Don's race for life; were forgotten still as he and the blacks stood
watching the schooner get under weigh.
Till a sharp clank of metal, as of a spear carelessly let fall, recalled
their roving thoughts, and brought, them swiftly to the right-about,
to find the Rock in the immediate vicinity of the pit's mouth literally
swarming with armed natives.