The man turned and squared his shoulders for a 133 blow. But the hand upon his shoulder remained, and even in the dusk he saw that the eyes continued unflinchingly upon him.
“Get back,” said Wilson, quietly.
The man turned, and without a word slunk to his place among his fellows. Wilson watched him as curiously as though he had been merely a bystander. And yet when he realized that the man had done his bidding, had done it because he feared to do otherwise, he felt a tingling sense of some new power. It was a feeling of physical individuality––a consciousness of manhood in the arms and legs and back. To him man had until now been purely a creature of the intellect gauged by his brain capacity. Here where the arm counted he found himself taking possession of some fresh nature within him.
“Take the lantern,” shouted Stubbs; “go to where we sat and wave it three times, slow like, back and forth.”
Wilson obeyed. Almost instantly he saw a launch steal from the ship’s side and make directly for the island.
“Now, men,” commanded Stubbs, “take your kits, get into fours and march to the left.”
With a shove here, a warning there, he moulded the scattered groups into a fairly orderly line. Then he directed them by twos into the small boat from the launch, which had come as far inshore as possible. Wilson stood opposite and kept the line intact. There was no trouble. The launch made two trips, and on 134 the last Stubbs and Wilson clambered in, leaving the island as deserted as the ocean in their wake. Stubbs wiped his forehead with a red bandanna handkerchief and lighted up his short clay pipe with a sigh of relief.
“So far, so good,” he said. “The only thing you can bank on is what’s over with. There’s several of them gents I should hate to meet on a dark night, an’ the same will bear steady watchin’ on this trip.”
He squatted in the stern, calmly facing the clouded faces with the air of a laborer who has completed a good day’s work. As they came alongside the ship he instructed each man how to mount the swaying rope ladder and watched them solicitously until they clambered over the side.
Most of them took this as an added insult and swore roundly at it as an imposition.