CHAPTER XXV.—THE SHARK-CHARMER IS CAUGHT IN HIS OWN TRAP.
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.