There was but one thing to be done: he must gain the schooner with all possible speed, at any risk, and take immediate steps for Jack's rescue.
Instinctively he shaped his course for the Elephant's head. The precipitous cliff was there skirted by a narrow beach. He had seen it gleaming above the surf-line while rounding the island on the morning of their arrival. This beach would afford a short-cut to the front of the island, off which the schooner lay. Once there, he must swim for it. These were his thoughts as he ran.
Tough work it was. True, the jungle did not grow close up to the base of the cliff; but here and there yawning nullahs, of considerable depth, and with sides almost as-steep as walls, had been cut across his pathway by the rains. At intervals, too, he encountered rugged, irregular heaps of stones, fallen from the cliff above, and studded thick with thorny clumps of prickly-pear.
The cutlass at his side impeded his progress. He threw it away. Then on again.
The sands at last! Close on his right lay the sea, close on his left rose the beetling cliff. There was not much room—just enough to run in. Away before him, like a narrow ribbon of burnished silver, stretched the smooth, hard sands, with never a living thing in sight on all their gleaming reach.
Gradually the cliffs crept behind, and the seafront opened out before him. And now, of a sudden, he espied a group of natives making for the beach—a company of fishermen, laden with creels, and oars, and nets.
Just ahead, a wedge-shaped gully split the low bank that bordered the beach on the landward side. Above this bank were the fishermen, heading for the gully. They were perhaps fifty yards short of it, while he, on the beach below the bank, was a full hundred. Should they reach it first, he would certainly be intercepted; whereas, could he but pass the point of danger ere' the natives gained it, he might succeed in eluding them. They did not see him yet. He darted under the bank, and ran as he had never run in all his life before.
Seventy-five yards, fifty yards, twenty yards—and then the gully. Had the natives reached it? As he raced past he darted a swift sidelong glance at the nullah. The fishermen were already halfway down it. They saw him, dropped their fishing implements, and gave chase, yelling like a pack of fiends.
On and on he ran, looking back but once to ascertain what start he had of the dusky gang. Twenty yards at least. They were just emerging from the bottom of the gully.
And now, away to the right, he sighted the schooner, riding at anchor with half a mile of sea between her holding-ground and the shore. He could see her boats swinging at the davits. They had not sighted him, then. He wondered whether Jack could see him from the cliff.