After all, Jack was but human. His fortitude, strung to a tense pitch
by those terrible days and nights of danger, snapped, in presence of
actual safety, like an overdrawn bow.
A pitiful spectacle he presented, his clothes torn to ribbons, his hands
and face grimy, bloodstained, yet ghastly in their pallor. Don uttered a
cry and flung himself on his knees beside his chum. He thought him dead.
“No, not dead, thank God! Only done up. He'll be all right soon,” said
Captain Leigh, with his hand upon Jack's heart, which still beat, though
faintly; and taking out a pocket-flask he poured a few drops of brandy
between the drawn, bloodless lips of the unconscious lad.
Under this stimulating treatment Jack soon came round. Needless to dwell
on the confusion into which his thoughts were thrown by the sight of
the familiar faces bending over him. His bewilderment, however, was but
momentary. Memory returned with a rush and spurred him to action and
speech. He sat bolt upright.
“Have you got the rascal?” he demanded in eager tones..
“What rascal?” asked Don.
“The shark-charmer, to be sure. Who else should I mean? He's on the
Rock, I tell you!”
“Him done stick his leg in trap, sa'b,” interpolated Puggles, with
appropriate action.
Don started to his feet. Jack followed suit, somewhat unsteadily.
“Is he above there?” cried Captain Leigh.
“Yes, yes!” said Jack eagerly.
“Up with you, boys!” cried the captain to the _peons_.
Don had already acquainted his father with the shark-charmer's part in
the tragic events of the past week, and the _peons_ had overheard the
story. They all knew the shark-charmer, and they followed their leader
with enthusiasm. They carried carbines; these glinted in the sunshine,
and clanked against the contracted walls of the rock stairway as they
jostled each other in the ascent.
A rush of many feet above, and the natives appeared at the stair-head.
Only the moment before had they discovered the temple to be deserted,
and become alive to the fact that they had lingered too long on the
Rock. They were now in hot pursuit of the fugitives. But the sudden
apparition of the red-sashed _peons_, the ominous glint and clash of the
carbines, promised hotter pursuit than they had bargained for. A wave of
consternation swept through their ranks. _Sauve qui peut!_ In headlong
flight they scattered in all directions.
As before, the shark-charmer had led the gang. He almost ran into the
arms of the _peons_.
“Rama! Rama!”
It was the cry of a coward and miscreant who knows that his last hour
of freedom, if not of life, has come: the hour of reckoning for his
misdeeds.
For as long as it took his half-paralysed tongue to frame the words, the
shark-charmer faced his approaching doom. Then he turned and fled like a
frightened cur.
The voice of Captain Leigh rang out on the air clear and full as the
note of a bugle:
“After him, lads! Never mind the others! Take the fellow alive!”
Up scrambled the _peons_ in obedience to the command, deploying to right
and left in a long, semicircular line as they debouched upon the Rock.
“Forward!”
Off they went at the quick; then, with a wild cheer, broke into a loping
run, the extremities of the semicircle closing in as they advanced.
The shark-charmer ran towards the Elephant's head, where the precipice
was the loftiest and dizziest of the four, the beach lying full three
hundred feet below. Whatever chance of escape he possessed, it assuredly
did not lie in that direction. To all human seeming his escape was an
utter impossibility. So thought the _peons_, and slackened speed, though
the extremities of the living, steel-crested semicircle still closed in
and in. Between, and somewhat ahead, ran the shark-charmer. He could not
run much farther; the brink of the precipice was only a few yards away.
He was caught!
What the thoughts of the guilty, hunted wretch were during those awful
moments, God alone knows.
The _peons_ had slowed down to a walk now--a walk confident, yet timid.
They were altogether sure of the shark-charmer, and not a little afraid
of the precipice. Not so the fugitive; for him all fear lay behind. He
advanced to the very brink of the cliff. His arms dropped at his sides.
In upon him closed his pursuers with cat-like tread and alert eyes. They
had no desire to be dashed over the cliff. Besides, was he not as good
as caught? A mere span of rock divided him from their grasp. He stood
motionless, half-turned towards them, apparently resigned to his fate.
Suddenly, however, hurling upon the close-drawn ranks a swift look of
defiance, he wheeled full-face to the sea; wheeled, and drew his arms up
and back.
Captain Leigh was the first to perceive the significance of the
movement.
“Seize him!” he shouted, dashing through the line of _peons_; “quick, or
he'll be over!... Good God!”
He fell back appalled. A stifled cry of horror broke from the _peons_.
The shark-charmer had leapt into mid-air.
CHAPTER XXV.--BRINGS THE QUEST TO AN END.
Silent and pale as death, Don turned and stood for a moment facing
Haunted Pagoda Hill, with head bared. His thoughts were with the captain
as he had seen him on that terrible evening of the murder. Plainer than
words his attitude cried:
“Avenged!”
The other natives had taken advantage of the opportunity afforded by the
pursuit of the shark-charmer to make good their escape. Captain Leigh
accordingly ordered the _peons_ back to the schooner. Their mission was
at an end.
At the head of the stairs they came upon Bosin. The monkey at once
clambered on to Don's shoulder, happier far than his new master.
Here, too, as they were about to turn their backs upon the spot where
death had hovered in ever-narrowing circles about their heads through
the hopeless hours of that awful night and day, Jack and Don joined
hands and silently renewed the friendship which had here been put to
so crucial a test. Our boy-friendships seldom pass the boundary line
of youth and manhood; or, if they do, too often become tarnished and
neglected things in which we find no pleasure. Theirs, just then, seemed
fit to last a lifetime.
“Say!” cried Jack abruptly, when he had done wringing his chunks hand,
“what about the pearls, old fellow? You're surely not going off without
them after all the trouble we've had? I'm not, anyhow!”
Jack was nothing if not practical.
Captain Leigh, who was standing by, overheard the words, and approached
with a curious, not to say mysterious, smile on his lips.
“What! not had enough of it yet, Jack?” said he, in bantering tones.
“Not I, sir! Where's the use of being half cut to bits if one doesn't
get what one's after? I shan't be content till I handle the shiners.”
“And where do you purpose looking for them?”
Jack's face fell.. It was not easy to find an answer to this question.
“Perhaps I can assist you,” continued Captain Leigh, with a repetition
of his mysterious smile. “This quest of yours, boys, has been a string
of surprises from the very start, judging by what I have heard and seen
of it. So, just to keep the ball rolling, we'll wind up with the biggest
surprise of all.”
And slipping his fingers into his waistcoat pocket, to the astonishment
of the young men he drew therefrom the identical wash-leather case
which they had all along, and with good reason, supposed to be in the
shark-charmer's possession.
“Why--how--?” Don began, hardly able to believe his eyes.
Jack interrupted him.
“Don't you see how it is?” cried he. “The governor's running a rig
on us. Old Salambo took the pearls, but left the bag; it's empty, of
course!”
Captain Leigh quietly turned the pouch upside-down, and poured into the
palm of his left hand a little silvery heap with a shimmer of pale gold
in its midst. This he pushed into full view with his finger. It was the
Golden Pearl.
“You don't mean to say we've been on a wild-goose chase all this time?”
gasped Jack.
“A downright fool's errand!” muttered Don, in tones of intense disgust.
“No; neither one nor the other,” interposed Captain Leigh. “Don't
go scattering self-accusations of that sort about before you hear my
explanation--though it's a queer business, I must acknowledge,” he
added, with a laugh. “Will you hear it out now or wait till we go on
board?”
“Tell us one thing,” put in Don; “were the pearls stolen at all?”
“No, they were not, or I should not be able to produce them. But the
shark-charmer was none the less a thief, for all that. But I see you're
on tenterhooks to hear all about it, so I'll read you the riddle at
once.”
Carefully restoring the pearls to the pouch, he handed the treasure to
Don, and then resumed:
“It goes without saying, of course, that you remember the evening you
brought the pearls on board. Well, shortly after you had placed them
in the locker--you had just turned in, I think--I got an uneasy sort of
feeling that they were not as safe there as they should be----”
“So you took them into your state-room!” interrupted Don, who thought he
began to see light.
“Exactly. The companion door was open, you recollect, and the
shark-charmer, I suppose, must have been hanging about at the moment
and seen me. Very imprudently, as it turned out, I left my door on the
latch, though I took the precaution to put the pearls under my pillow.
You remember, perhaps, my paying off some of the men that afternoon?
Well, when I turned in I left the bag of rupees--or rather what remained
of them, about two hundred in all, I should think--on the sofa opposite
my berth, and my gold chronometer on the stand at my head, as I always
do. I slept like a top until I was called at three, when we got under
weigh. At this time, you understand, I was under the impression that you
two were snug between the sheets. The schooner was a dozen miles down
the coast before I found out my mistake. Being due in Colombo the
following day, you see, I couldn't put back. Neither could I make head
nor tail of your disappearance until the carrier brought your letter,
Don. That made the whole matter plain enough. You had found the locker
empty, supposed that the shark-charmer had stolen the pearls, and had
given chase.”
“Then,” cried Jack, “what I said a minute ago was right enough, after
all. The pearls were safe, and we've been on a jolly wild-goose chase.”
“Oh, no; that doesn't follow. The shark-charmer left the schooner far
from empty-handed. He stole the bag of rupees and the watch.”
“Ah, but what about the handkerchief the pearls were tied up in?” asked
Don. “I fished it out of the water off the island here. How do you
account for that?”
“I must have thrown the handkerchief on the sofa. Probably the fellow
snatched it up with the bag of rupees, thinking that it still contained
the pearls.”
“And threw it away when he found that it didn't,” chuckled Jack. “Well,
the shiners are all right, anyhow!”
Nightfall found the schooner bowling towards the open sea under full
sail. Three figures stood grouped on her deck in the fading twilight.
“It was just about here,” said Don in a choked voice:
“Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of our crew;
No more he'll hear the tempest howling,
For death has broached him to.
His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful below he did his duty,
But now he's gone aloft.”
All three uncovered and stood with bowed heads until the old sailor's
resting-place was left far behind.
THE END.