“Theer, sor, I can see it. A big one staling away among the threes. For the sake of all the saints give the wurrud!”
“Fire, then!” cried the overseer; and the sentry raised his piece to the “present.”
Bart Wrigley had not been at sea from childhood without winning a sailor’s eyes. Dark as the jungle was, and more distant as he stood, it was not so black that he could not make out the object which had oaken the sentry’s notice, and at which he took aim.
One moment Bart raised his hoe to rush at the man; the next he had brought it down heavily on Abel’s boulders, sending him forward upon his face, and uttering a cry of rage as he fell.
It was almost simultaneous. The cry uttered by Abel Dell and the report of the sentry’s piece seemed to smite the air together; but Abel’s cry was first, and disarranged the soldier’s aim, his bullet cutting the leaves of the jungle far above the ground.
“Look at that now!” he cried, as he turned sharply to see Abel struggling on the ground, with Bart holding him, and the overseer drawing a pistol front his breast.
“Lie still!” whispered Bart. “It was not at Mary.”
Then aloud—
“Quick, here! water! He’s in a fit.”
As Abel grasped his friend’s thoughts he lay back, struggling faintly, and then half-closed his eyes and was quite still.