“How? Oh, one of those treacherous niggers shot his knife at me—the old trick,” said Jack, scrambling to his feet and shaking himself with nonchalant air, “I'd have told you, only I forgot it in the scuffle, Nothing but a scratch, anyway; I'm all right.”
Don's look was rather dubious, for, in spite of his companion's assumption of sang-froid, he could not but foresee the possible effect of a badly-wounded arm upon their proposed descent of the cliff.
The moon was now well above the horizon; so, setting the blacks to watch the stairs, they went to work on the rope at once—an easy task compared to what it must have been had they attempted to utilise the tough, fibrous palm-branches, as at first proposed.
“You haven't told me yet,” Jack presently observed, pausing in his task of knotting together the long strips of cloth as Don tore them off ready to his hand; “you haven't told me how you came to lay the lascar by the heels—in the creek, I think you said? Let's have the story now, old fellow.”
“Oh, there's a whole cable's-length of events leading up to that,” said Don. “I'd better begin at the beginning—with your disappearance, I mean.”
So there, beneath the stars, while the rope which was to ensure escape from the Rock grew under, their busy fingers, he recounted link by link the chain of events which the days and nights of Jack's absence had forged.
Far into the night did the story spin itself out, for Jack had many questions to ask, many comments to make; until at last it came to that terrible moment when Don had sought to rouse the captain, and found him to be sleeping the sleep that knows no waking. His voice grew choked and husky then Jack bent low over his work, and tears glistened in the ghostly moonlight.
“And in his jacket pocket I found this,” concluded Don, producing the well-thumbed Prayer Book. “On the fly-leaf—no, you can't make it out now, the light is so faint—but on the fly-leaf the dear old chap had written that whatever happened, he was to be buried at sea. So this morning, just before daybreak, we put off in the cutter, and gave him what he wished for—a seaman's burial.”
Jack knew the whole sad story now, and for a time they fell into one of those silences which, somehow, are apt to follow the mention of the dead who have endeared themselves to us in life—silences eloquent, in their very stillness, of regret and grief.
“There, it's done,” said Jack at last, as he tied and tested the final knot. “And now, hurrah for the cliff!”