An hour later the men emerged from the Clubhouse.
“I’m all in,” Honey muttered. “And I don’t care who knows it. I’m going for a swim.” Head down, he staggered away from the group and zigzagged over the beach.
“I guess I’ll go back to the camp for a smoke,” Frank said. “I never realized before that I had nerves.” Frank was white, and he shook at intervals. But some strange spirit, compounded equally of a sense of victory and of defeat, flashed in his eyes.
“I’m going off for a tramp.” Pete was sunken as well as ashen; he looked dead. “Do you suppose they’ll hurt themselves pulling against those ropes?” he asked tonelessly.
“Let them struggle for a while,” Ralph advised. Like the rest of them, Ralph was exhausted-looking and pale. But at intervals he swaggered and glowed. With his strange, new air of triumph and his white teeth glittering through his dark mustache, he was more than ever like some huge predatory cat. “Serves them right! They’ve taken it out of us for three months.”
Billy did not speak, but he swayed as he followed Frank. He fell on his bed when they reached the camp. He lay there all night motionless, staring at the ceiling.
There was a tiny spot of blood on one hand.
V
A.