When Hahn appeared, Meek had revived.
'You are a fool!' cried the German angrily. He was feeling very sore. Meek had been the theme of discussion in the officers' mess, and Hahn had had to endure a good deal of heavy raillery on his account. He was told that he had been sent out to catch niggers; why had he burdened himself with a pig of an Englishman? Where had he found the man? How had a solitary Englishman, a seaman, come to be among natives in this remote part of the island? They supposed he had been shipwrecked; then why had Hahn not left the man to meet his fate among cannibals? Hahn was in a difficulty, because he had said nothing about the other white men, told nothing about his rescue by them. His escape from the cannibals, according to his story, had been due to his own ingenuity. He could not satisfactorily account for Meek, and he wished that, instead of bringing him as a prisoner, he had knocked him on the head or shot him at once.
Now, however, he was actuated by another motive. The Englishman, to his vast surprise, had defied him, and his fellow-officers had chaffed him about it. The Englishman's spirit must be broken.
'You are a fool,' he repeated. 'You bring all zis on yourself.. You shall haf food to-night; I am not hard, but you shall be tied up still. It is German discipline. To-morrow must you vork--understand? You are bad example to ze ozers. Zere is ze night for zinking. You shall zink. In ze morning you shall haf sense, and vork.'
'Never!' cried Meek hoarsely. 'Not coal. Not for German pirates!'
'Pig! I say you shall zink about it all night,' roared Hahn, exasperated. 'To-morrow you shall vork, or I vill shoot you dead. Understand?'
Meek made no reply. Hahn savagely bade Hans give him a little food and order the sentries to keep an eye on him during the night. Then he returned to the beach, and Meek was left to contemplate the prospect of twelve hours' torture before a bullet put an end to it all.
CHAPTER XII
THE LEDGE
About an hour before sunset, two men were warily feeling their way among the boulders that strewed the steep declivity above the ledge. Slowly they moved downwards, rarely rising to their full height, but stooping as they dodged in and out between the largest of the stones, and heeding their feet with strained watchfulness. They were Trentham and Hoole. Grinson, with the rest of their party, had been left in hiding near the burnt village, unwillingly; but Trentham had remarked that his bulky form was ill suited to reconnaissance work; a call would be made on his resources later.