A loud outcry from the blacks, however, drew his gaze seawards again, and as he looked his pulses thrilled. Don was making straight for the surf!
As often happens on these coasts when the wind is but a whisper, and the sea glass-like in its placidity, a heavy ground-swell was rolling sullenly in from the outer bay. A stone's throw from the shore this swell was but a sinuous, almost imperceptible, undulation of the glassy surface; but as it swept towards the beach, where the water shoaled rapidly, of a sudden it reared aloft a crest of hissing foam, which curled higher and higher as it came on, until it overtopped the sands at the height of a boat's mast. Then with a mighty roar it broke, hurled itself far up the shelving sands, and retired, seething, to make room for the green battalions pressing shorewards in its wake.
Straight towards this living wall of water Don ran. The two bands of natives, uniting their forces as they swerved aside like bloodhounds in pursuit, were close upon him. Before, above him, curled the mighty wave; and then, to his great horror, Jack saw him stumble and fall.
Lucky fall! Ere the natives could throw themselves upon him, the combing wave broke, passed directly over his prostrate body, swept the niggers off their legs, and hurled them with irresistible force far up the beach.
A moment later the breathless watchers on the cliff saw a black object floating on the surface of the water, yards from shore. It was Don. The under-tow had swept him out to sea, beyond his pursuers' reach.
An expert and powerful swimmer, he lost no time in increasing the distance between himself and the disconcerted native crew, one or two of whom attempted to overtake him, but soon gave it up for a bad job.
Then a boat put off from the schooner, and soon Jack had the satisfaction of seeing his plucky friend hauled' in over her side. A quarter of an hour later, when the boat had regained the schooner, the signal gun once more boomed out over the sea, and with feelings of devout thankfulness to Heaven Jack realised that Don was safe on board, and that the term of his own and his companions' imprisonment on the summit of the Rock was bounded by a few brief hours at the most.
Even as he looked, as if by magic the schooner's canvas swelled to the breeze, and he caught the distant song of the lascars as they hove the anchor to the cathead.
Hunger, thirst, his wound, the very enemy at the foot of the rock stairs—all had been forgotten in the breathless interest inspired by Don's race for life; were forgotten still as he and the blacks stood watching the schooner get under weigh.
Till a sharp clank of metal, as of a spear carelessly let fall, recalled their roving thoughts, and brought, them swiftly to the right-about, to find the Rock in the immediate vicinity of the pit's mouth literally swarming with armed natives.