“Yes, sir. Rum won’t have no more effect on him than tea would on you and me. You try another idea, sir. What do you say to frightening them black fellows overboard? They’re a rum lot; just like a pack o’ children. Frightened o’ bogies. Show ’em a good scarecrow or tatty dooly, as the Scotch folk call it, and they’d think it was what they call a bunyip.”
“What’s a bunyip?”
“What they calls a debble-debble, sir. They’re awful babies in anything they can’t understand. You must give ’em some red fire, or blue fire, or ’lectricity.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said the doctor, impatiently. “We must temporise. It is no use to try and do anything in haste. The first thing we have to find out is whether that ruffian goes off to sleep or keeps watch.”
Carey pointed to the ventilator over the door.
“I could see through that,” he whispered, “if you could take me on your shoulders.”
Bostock nodded, and placed his hands firmly on the sides of the door, bending down his head and standing as firm as a rock, while Carey’s first instinct was to take a run and a jump; but he did not, for one reason, there was not room, another, that it would have been folly; but he placed his hand upon the man’s shoulders and steadily climbed up till he could stand stooping upon his back, and then he cautiously peered through a little crack, and the first thing he saw was the beachcomber sitting back fast asleep.
This sent a thrill of satisfaction through him, and he turned his eyes towards the saloon door, and a chill of horror ran through him, for he caught sight of something bright and flashing, and it was a few moments before he grasped the fact that it was the lamp reflected from the eyes of one of the blacks close to the floor.
Nearly a minute elapsed before he could make out the black figure of their owner, and then he saw it move.
It was plain enough now as it crept in and nearer to the shaded rays of the lamp. Carey could even see that the black had his club and the curved knife-like blade of his boomerang stuck behind in the coarse hair girdle he wore about his waist.