“There, just below there; I saw him.”
For answer Dick leaned over the gig’s bows, and thrust down his boat-hook.
“Give way, my lads,” he cried, and again and again he thrust down his hook. Then a strange, choking feeling of horror seemed to seize upon the middy, and he felt dizzy as he gazed after the boat in the midst of that weird darkness, which made the event ten times more terrible than if it had been by day.
Just as his heart sank with dread, and he in fancy saw the dead body seized by one or other of the terrible reptiles that swarmed in the river, wondering the while which of the poor men it was, and why they had heard no alarm at the island, Dick’s hoarse voice was heard some distance astern, exclaiming in triumph—
“I’ve got him, my lads! Give way!”
Chapter Thirty Five.
How Ali made his Plans.
There is a strange kind of stoicism about a Mohammedan that seems to give him an abundance of calmness when he comes face to face with death. He is a fatalist, and quietly says to himself what is to be will be, and he resigns himself to his fate.