“On deck with you now!” commanded Coombs. “If we’re goin’ to do this at all, we’re goin’ to make a good job of it. You go first!”
Tully had to obey. Coombs puffed out the light and—leaving Hal Briggs in utter dark, bleeding, poisoned, dying—followed on up the ladder. The dory pushed away, laden with three unconscious men and three others by no means unscathed of battle. Toward the shore it struggled, borne on the hungry surges.
Thus fled the men of McLaughlin’s crew—avenged. Thus, brought low by the cursèd thing that had come half-way ’round the world and waited half a hundred years to strike, Hal sank toward the great blackness.
Lotus-bud, symbol of sleep, and poisoned blade—cobra-fang from the dim, mysterious Orient—now with their work well done, lay under waves of storm in a wild, northern sea.
Above, in the black, storm-whipped sky, was the blind face of Destiny peering with laughter down upon the fulfilment of its prophecy?
CHAPTER XLII
IN EXTREMIS
It would be difficult to tell how long the wounded boy lay there, but after a certain time, some vague glimmering of consciousness returned. No light came back. Neither was motion possible to him. His understanding now was merely pain, confusion and a great roaring wind and wave. Utter weakness gripped his body; but more than this seemed to enchain him. By no effort of his reviving will could he move hand or foot; and even the slow breath he took, each respiration a stab of agony, seemed for some reason a mighty effort.