While his little master was wrapped in the deep slumber which follows exhaustion, the negro had besought permission to go on shore and search for his master. Captain Mason, in his generous pity of the poor fellow, sent the boat back to the place it had reached the night before, to lie in wait for the negro while he searched around the palm trees and the neighboring chaparral for some traces of the noble master who had won his whole savage heart by great kindness.
The men who waited in the boat saw him wandering along the shore in a dejected attitude, for a long time. At last he came near a great spreading aloe, whose broad under leaves were half buried in the sand. Those who watched, heard a low, wailing cry, and saw the negro fall upon his knees, and rock to and fro in an agony of grief over some object concealed behind the aloe.
"He's found something that's cut him down like grape shot," said one of the sailors, flinging a quid of tobacco, which he had just cut for himself, back into his box, and closing it softly.
"Such a scream as that is enough to take a man off his tobacco for a month," answered another tar, taking off his tarpaulin, and wiping his bald head with the sleeve of his jacket.
"Supposen we pull in and see what it is?" said Rice.
"No; the captain told us not to go ashore. Some of them tarnal niggers 'ed get hold of the boat, spite of us," answered the old tar.
"But we'll row up into shallow water, and one of us can go see what's the matter, and the rest 'ell take care of the cutter. Every thing seems to be still along there, not a nigger in sight," answered Rice, who commanded the boat.
The boat was urged into water so shallow that one of the sailors rolled up his duck trousers and stepped in, wading easily ashore. With a long, rolling step he swung himself forward up the beach, and soon found Jube on his knees by the body of a dead man, who lay in the gaunt shadow of the aloe, pierced through the heart, with a spear broken short in the wound.
Jube looked up, his black face wet with tears, his great hands clasped and pressed downward in the sand.
"It is him. Me has found the master," he said in broken English. "Cold! cold! oh, so dead!"