As he did so a man who was leaning against it fell in.
"Shut the door, quick!" he gasped, and Bones obeyed.
The visitor who had so rudely irrupted himself was a man of middle age, wearing a coarse pea-jacket and blue jersey of a seaman, his peaked hat covered with dust, as Bones perceived later, when the sound of scurrying footsteps had died away.
The man was gripping his left arm as if in pain, and a thin trickle of red was running down the back of his big hand.
"Sit down, my jolly old mariner," said Bones anxiously. "What's the matter with you? What's the trouble, dear old sea-dog?"
The man looked up at him with a grimace.
"They nearly got it, the swine!" he growled.
He rolled up his sleeve and, deftly tying a handkerchief around a red patch, chuckled:
"It is only a scratch," he said. "They've been after me for two days, Harry Weatherall and Jim Curtis. But right's right all the world over. I've suffered enough to get what I've got—starved on the high seas, and starved on Lomo Island. Is it likely that I'm going to let them share?"
Bones shook his head.