“Shore ahoy! just walk a bit farther back from the water’s edge, there, or we shall be obliged to fire. We’re about to land Sir Edgar; and if there’s any sign of a rush at the boat, we shall shoot to kill. So if you don’t want to be hurt, you’d better stand well back.”
“Hold on there a moment,” I answered back, disregarding the threat. “Surely, men, you do not intend to abandon us here, unarmed; without a shelter from the weather, and with only the clothes we stand up in?”
“Oh, you’ll do well enough, I don’t doubt,” replied Rogers, brutally. “You don’t want arms, because there’s nobody nor nothing here that’ll hurt you; you don’t need clothes, because the climate’s so warm that you can do without ’em; and, as to a shelter, why, we’ve left all the axes and shovels ashore; you’re welcome to them, and if you can’t build a house with such tools as that, you deserves to go without. There’s plenty of fruit, and plenty of good water, so you won’t starve; and, lastly, there’s a chance for you to get all the treasure that’s in that other hole—if we decides that we don’t want it ourselves.”
“What?” I exclaimed, indignantly, “after stealing my ship and my treasure from me, will you not go to the small trouble of passing the ladies’ and children’s clothing into a boat, and sending it—”
“Well, if you won’t stand back, take that!” interrupted Rogers; and as the word left his lips there was a flash, a sharp report, and a bullet went singing close past my ear.
At the same moment I felt my arm seized by a white figure that unexpectedly appeared at my side, and Miss Merrivale’s voice, rendered almost inarticulate by scorn and anger, exclaimed—
“Leave the cowardly brutes alone. You shall not humiliate yourself further by stooping to ask a favour from them, even on our behalf; nor shall you wantonly expose yourself to the risk of being murdered in cold blood. I will not have it!”
With which, she dragged me unresistingly to the spot where her sister and the children stood, and then, without a word of warning, flung herself prone upon the sand and burst into a perfect passion of tears.
“Nay, do not give way thus, I pray you,” I said, as I knelt beside her and raised her prostrate form in my arms. “Our plight is bad enough, I grant you, though not so bad that it might not easily be very much worse. And if you will only try to be brave and patient we will soon arrange matters so that you shall not be altogether destitute of comfort and—”
“Do you think I care for my own comfort?” she interrupted me, passionately. “No! as that wretch said, we are not likely to starve; and I suppose you and Edgar will be able to build such a shelter as will suffice to protect us from the sun and rain. It is not that; it is—oh, the base, ungrateful, contemptible creatures, to treat you like this! I am sure they will be punished for it.”