The promontory slid nearer. Another gun, this time with a sharp, coughing sound, followed by a crescendo-diminuendo scream, like the demoniac wail of winter wind.
"A shell," explained the Swede. "That means business. If they're Russians, they can't hit us. If French, they probably won't, in this sea. If English, they probably will. We must yust take our chances. What does the captain say?"
"Here's the point," translated Michali, "once around that they will never find us."
Curtis looked. The steep cliff photographed itself indelibly upon his mind. It towered high above their heads, rude, grim, and perpendicular, but at its base a spur of land sloped into the water, like the foot to a mighty leg. And as he looked, a crashing sound was heard, and the little vessel shivered and lurched, wounded to death.
"English, by damn!" cried Lindbohm. "Can you swim?"
CHAPTER II
ON FRIENDLY SHORES
"How shall I ever thank you for saving my life?"
"Very easily. If you know anything about this part of the island you can yust lead us out of here. If we don't find something to eat to-day we shall be sorry we didn't drown. I'd rather drown than starve any time. It don't last so long, and isn't so painful."
The two speakers were Michali and the Lieutenant. They were standing, together with the American, beside a fire of driftwood which the vestas in Curtis' metal matchbox had enabled them to light. A bit of sand, sheltered from the waves by a projecting rock, had made it easy for them to land. It is true that Michali's strength had soon given out, but his friends, both being powerful swimmers, had brought him to the shore in safety. After scrambling for a way blindly up the side of a hill, actuated by an instinctive, though perhaps groundless, fear of capture, they had paused and looked down upon the sea. There were two of the sailors hanging to the arm of a gallows frame planted in the sea. The torn canvas fluttered helpless in the wind. The captain clung to the arm of another gallows a few feet distant, and the third sailor was floating about over the submerged caique on the cabin roof. The gunboat shied out into deeper water, and brought the filibusters in. Then the three comrades crouched behind a rock, while the Cyclopean eye of the monster that hurls deadlier missiles than old Homer ever dreamed of searched hill and shore.