“But what is to be done hereafter?”
This was the question he put to himself, and which had to be answered.
The mutineers kept carefully out of sight, and, as night settled over the scene, the captain remained wide awake and vigilant. There was ample food for thought and reflection––the cutting of the hose-pipes of the diving apparatus, the attack by the mutineers, the terrible flight and pursuit, the interference of Inez––all these and more surged through the brain of the captain, while he slowly paced back and forth, with eyes and ears wide open. Inez still slumbered, and all was silent, excepting the boom of the ocean against the coral-reef; while, as the night wore on, the captain maintained his lonely watch.
Captain Bergen scanned the fringe of shore which circled about him, like a great wall thrown up between 118 the lagoon and the Pacific, that steadily broke on the outside. But turn his keen eyes wheresoever he chose, he could detect not the slightest sign of the mutineers. He thought it likely they would start a fire somewhere, but no starlike point of light twinkled from beneath the palm-trees, and he was left to conjecture where they were and what they were doing.
“They will probably wait till they think I am asleep,” was his thought, “and then they will swim quietly out and try to board.”
He believed it would be either that way or they would construct a raft and paddle themselves out to the schooner. Knowing the captain was on the Coral, and knowing how important it was that he should not be allowed to run away and leave them there, they would neglect no precaution to prevent his going off. They, too, would understand what it was he was waiting for, and they were seamen enough to know the hour when he would be able to sail, and, consequently, what they were to do to prevent it.
“They have no way of closing the channel, or they would do so, and it remains–––Hello!”
He was standing at the prow, looking carefully about him, and with all his senses alert, and he stood thus fully twenty minutes, expecting something whose precise nature he had already conjectured.
“That splash meant something, and I think–––”