Chapter Twenty Two.
As Carey landed he glanced at the now enormous stack of pearl shells and at the tubs once more well filled with oysters, for the beachcomber had not let his men be idle. But the sight of the treasures of which they had been robbed only irritated the boy, and he turned away to forget it in encountering the grinning face of Black Jack close by.
“Come, fro boomerang,” he said, handing the wooden scimitar-like blade, and pointing along the sands.
“Ah,” cried the boy, eagerly, “give me hold.”
As he caught the boomerang, the other blacks started off along the sands as if they were going to field for a ball, and Carey laughed as he prepared to throw.
“It will begin to sail up before it gets to them,” he thought to himself, laughingly, and he rather enjoyed the idea of the big, lithe fellows running through the hot sand in vain.
Then, imitating, as he thought, the black’s action exactly, Carey sent the weapon spinning along about a yard above the sand; but it did not begin to rise, and before it dropped one of the men caught it cleverly and sent it back with such accuracy that Jackum caught it in turn and handed it to the boy.
Carey threw again half-a-dozen times, for the curved blade to be caught by one or the other, no matter how wildly diverse were the casts, and sent back to Jackum, who never missed a catch, standing perfectly calm and at the proper moment darting out his right or left hand, when flip, he had it safely and handed it back, grinning with delight.
“White boy no fro boomerang,” he said.
“No,” cried Carey, who was hot and irritable with the failure attending his exertions. “You’re cheating me; this one won’t go.”