Now it was low tide. The deck of the hulk was a good five feet below the margin where I stood with my brother. It was still only three yards away—nine feet—nothing to a very moderate athlete.
By four o'clock the evening had come. By five it was dark as midnight. Bernard turned behind us to where two people were waiting.
"You quite understand?" he said in a low voice.
I did not turn round; for certain reasons I could not.
"Ready?" Bernard asked.
"Yes, old cock," I answered, "and I hope you can jump it!"
I was on my own ground. I had won a lot of pots in the long jump at Oxford. I thought I should rather snaffle Bernard on this job, which was wicked enough. We went back ten yards for the run. The snow was still falling softly and thickly. There was the deep ditch between the bank and the deck of the dim, desolate old Hulk. It looked very ugly, and as I held up my elbows and started the run off, I heard a stifled noise behind me. I knew what it meant, but I would not listen. This was no tune for sentiment.
I took off on the very edge of the yielding mud-bank, leapt downwards in a great curve, lighted full over the bulwark of the Hulk with a thud, slid forward on the ice-bound deck, and was brought up short against the cabin. I wheeled round as a man does after a long slant at Murren. The whole thing did not take more than a second or two.
Turning, I saw Bernard in the air. He lighted as I had done, but his foot slipped before he got his balance and he fell heavily, striking his head against the stump of the main-mast which, with a yard shipped, was used as a derrick to raise the bridge to the marsh.
He fell with a noise like a sack of potatoes. I went up to him, tried to raise him, and found that he was unconscious. Something like warm varnish was oozing out of his head. My fingers dabbled in it. What I thought does not matter. If he was dead, he was dead, though I was pretty certain a tough old bird like Bernard was only stunned. But I had my orders, and I left him where he lay.