“Don’t move an inch, or you are both dead men. And throw up your hands! If you dare to move I will fire; and, as you may see, I am covering you both!”
As Leslie spoke the two men started guiltily apart, and then stood staring in stupefaction at the two figures that had so suddenly appeared before them.
“Up with your hands, both of you,” reiterated Leslie, sharply, for the strangers had apparently been taken too completely by surprise to fully comprehend all that was said to them. “And,” he continued, “listen carefully to me, both of you. You are my prisoners, and I intend to make perfectly sure of you. I know all about you; I know you to be two men who are engaged in a desperate enterprise, and are likely to stick at nothing. Now, understand me well: I am just as resolute as you are, and if you give me the slightest trouble I will put a bullet through you, as surely as you stand there; so do not attempt any nonsense if you value your lives. Now you,” indicating one of them with his levelled revolver, “move three paces to your right—so; halt! that will do. Now, Nicholls, lash that fellow’s hands firmly behind his back.”
“Well, here’s a pretty go,” yelled one of them to the other in an access of impotent fury. “A dandy old mess you’ve made of this job, Mister bloomin’ Peter Burton, haven’t you? and dragged me into it along with yer! I wish I’d never had nothin’ at all to do with the cussed business, now, I do; I knowed it was boun’ to go a mucker, from the very fust! But you and that bloomin’ skowbank of a Turnbull would drag me into it, temptin’ me with your yarns of treasure, and bein’ as rich as a Jew, and a lot more rot o’ the same sort, and now, here I am, landed—”
“There, that will do, my man,” interrupted Leslie, sharply, as Nicholls deftly proceeded to lash the fellow’s hands behind him; “your repentance comes just a little too late to be of any use to you. You are a mutineer and a murderer, and you must take the consequences of your evil deeds.”
“What do you know about it?” growled the man who had been addressed as Burton. “Who’s been blowin’ the gaff to you? If it’s Turnbull that’s been doin’ a split, I’ll wring his neck for ’im!”
“There, sir, number one is all right,” exclaimed Nicholls as he stepped away from his victim. “If he gets adrift I’ll give him leave to eat me, body and bones! Shall I go ahead with this other chap now?”
“Yes,” assented Leslie; “truss him up, and let us have done with them both as quickly as possible.”
Burton, who was an immensely powerful fellow, poured forth a volley of the most horrible curses and threats as Nicholls approached him; but Leslie stood but half a dozen paces from him, with his revolver levelled straight at the fellow’s head, and a stern word of caution sufficed to quell the fast-rising inclination to resistance that shone in the man’s eyes; he subsided suddenly to a state of sullen silence, and submitted in his turn to be bound. The whole episode had not occupied more than five minutes, at the outside. Then, with their hands firmly secured behind them, the two men were marched off to the hut that had been built by the savages, where they were compelled to lie down and submit to a further process of binding, upon the completion of which they found themselves absolutely helpless; for now both their hands and their feet were lashed together so tightly and securely that it was quite impossible for them to move otherwise than to give an occasional feeble, impotent wriggle.
This accomplished to their complete satisfaction, Leslie and Nicholls returned to the tent, and resumed their alternate vigils until the morning; for they knew not what arrangements these men might have made with their fellow-mutineers, and deemed it wisest not to relax their vigilance now until the entire adventure had been brought to a successful issue.