Captain Staunton was in charge of the ship-building operations, with Kit as foreman-in-chief, while Rex and Brook were superintending operations at the battery; the former, with a roll of rough-and-ready drawings in his hand, “setting out” the work, while the latter overlooked the construction of a lime-kiln. Bob was making himself generally useful.
It was while all hands were at their busiest that Lance put in an appearance, leading little May by the hand. She of course at once made a dash at her father, flinging her tiny arms round his neck, kissing and hugging him vigorously, and showing in a hundred childish ways her delight at being with him; and the unwonted sight of the pretty little creature created quite a temporary sensation. A large majority of the men there were steeped to the lips in crime, yet there were very few among them who had not still left in them—hidden far down in the innermost recesses of their nature, and crushed almost out of existence by a load of vice and evil-doing, it may be—some remnant of the better feelings of humanity; and their features brightened and softened visibly as they witnessed the delight of this baby girl at finding herself with her father, and looked at her happy innocent face. Her visit was like a ray of sunshine falling upon them from out the bosom of a murky and storm-laden sky; and as she flitted fearlessly to and fro among them, they felt for the moment as though a part of their load of guilt had been taken from them; that in some subtle way her proximity had exercised a purifying and refining influence upon them, and that they were no longer the utterly vile, God-forsaken wretches they had been. Fierce, crime-scarred faces lighted up with unwonted smiles as she approached them; and hands that had been again and again soaked in human blood were outstretched to warn or remove her from the vicinity of possible danger. For the first few minutes Captain Staunton had been anxious and apprehensive at her unexpected presence among the ruffianly band; but his face cleared, and his knitted brow relaxed as he saw the effect which the sight of her produced, and when Lance joined him he said—
“Let her alone; she is doing more in a few minutes to humanise these men than you or I could achieve in a year.”
The child was naturally interested in everything she saw, and with tireless feet she passed to and fro, pausing now and then to gravely watch the operations of some stalwart fellow hewing out a timber with his adze, driving home a bolt with his heavy maul, or digging into the stubborn rock with his pickaxe, and not infrequently asking questions which the puzzled seamen strove in vain to answer.
At length, having satisfied her curiosity by a thorough inspection of all that was going forward, she wandered down to the spot where the hulk had been broken up. This was a tiny sheltered bay or indentation in the rocks; and a large raft had here been constructed out of the dismembered timbers and planking, which were kept afloat in order that the powerful rays of the sun might not split and rend the wood. Two or three detached planks formed a gangway between the raft and the rocks, and along these planks May passed on to the raft, without attracting the attention of anyone, it happening that just at that moment most of the hands were summoned to tail on to the fall of a tackle which was being used to raise one of the timbers into its place. Gradually she strayed from one end of the raft to the other; and presently her attention was attracted by a curious triangular-shaped object which she saw projecting out of the water and moving slowly along. She wondered what it could possibly be, and, in order the better to see it, ran nimbly out upon the end of a long plank which projected considerably beyond the rest. So eager was she to watch the movements of the strange object that she overshot her mark and with a splash and a cry of alarm fell into the water.
The triangular object immediately disappeared.
Luckily at this instant Bob glanced round, just in time to see the splash caused by May’s involuntary plunge and to note the simultaneous disappearance of a dark object in the water close at hand. Divining in a moment what had happened, he set off with a bound down the sloping rocky way toward the raft, shouting as he went—
“A shark! A shark! And May has fallen overboard.”
For a single instant there was a horror-stricken pause; then tools were flung recklessly aside, the tackle-fall was let go and the timber suffered to fall unheeded to the ground again, and the entire gang with one accord followed in Bob’s wake, hastily snatching up ropes, boat-hooks, poles, oars, anything likely to be useful, as they ran.
Meanwhile Bob, running with the speed of a hunted deer, had passed—as it seemed to the spectators—with a single bound down the rocks and along the entire length of the raft, from the extreme end of which he plunged without pause or hesitation into the sea. A bright momentary flash as he vanished beneath the surface of the water, seemed to indicate that he carried a drawn knife or some such weapon in his hand.