“And the Malays?” he said.
“They will not see us hidden here among the trees. They will pass us if they come. Make use of your landmarks, so as to find us, and Heaven give you good fortune, my dear boy!”
“No, no,” cried Mark. “I cannot leave you all like this.”
“It is to help us,” said his mother. “Mrs O’Halloran is right. You see we can get no farther.”
Mark saw that his duty lay in fetching help, and after a sharp look-out in the direction from which danger was expected, and another at the salient points of the shore, so as to guide him to the point where the ladies and the sick man were hidden, he forgot his own fatigue in the excitement, and leaving arms, ammunition, and everything weighty, he started off alone.
It seemed as if he would never reach that ridge of black rocks which formed the eastern curve of Crater Bay, and even when it came in sight there was a nightmare-like feeling upon him that he was no nearer.
Then, too, his despairing thoughts would keep getting the mastery, and asking him what he was going to do when he reached the bay and found that there was nothing visible but the charred hull of the ship, and that his friends were gone.
At last, though, he could feel that he was nearing the black ridge; the sand began to change from its yellow and white coral look, and became dashed with black. Then it grew blacker, and at last the grains were all jetty in colour, and there was the great black pile of basaltic rock, with its columns and steps rising higher and higher, and the question ever present:
Were his father and the rest all behind there busy over the little smack they had built lying now in the safe anchorage of the bay?
He could bear it no longer, and drawing a long breath, he started to run, though it was only a feeble trot, till the rocks rose up steeply, and he was compelled to climb slowly and painfully with many a slip, but always urged by the sensation that if he did not use every effort he would be too late.