“But you can do no good,” said Mr Denning. “Lena, my child, they have been very brave, and done everything they could; tell them to go now; it is to save their lives.”
“Don’t—don’t, Miss Denning,” I shouted, for I could bear it no longer. “There isn’t anybody here but Nic Walters who would be such a cur.”
I said the words passionately, feeling a kind of exaltation come over me, and everything was in the most unstudied way, or I should not have said it at all.
The words were not without their effect, for they stung Walters to the quick. The moment before he had been lying shivering in the bottom of the boat, but as I spoke he sprang up and cried in a high-pitched, hysterical voice that might have been Mr Preddle’s—
“It isn’t true, Miss Denning. I’ve been a treacherous coward and a beast, but I’d sooner die now than leave you to come to harm.”
“A pity you didn’t, my lad, before you betrayed us as you did,” said Mr Brymer, in a deep-toned voice.
“Ah, yes. Words are no use now,” said the captain slowly.
“No! No use now—no use now,” cried Walters wildly. “It is too late, too late,” and before any one could grasp what he was about to do, he leaped over the side into the black water.
But not to drown, for the scintillations of the tiny creatures disturbed by his plunge showed exactly where he was, and Bob Hampton only had to lower the boat-hook and thrust it right down as a wild cry came from the cabin overhead. The next minute he had caught the wretched, half-distraught fellow, and dragged him to the surface, where Neb Dumlow seized him and snatched him over the side to let him fall into the bottom of the boat, and thrust his foot upon him to keep him down.
“Want to doctor him, sir?” then said Dumlow gruffly.