“Stow my cargo!” chuckled the captain, as he ran the cutter bow-on into the sand, “a nautical sea-sarpent himself couldn't smell us out here, says you. So here we heaves to, and here we lies until——swabs an' slush-buckets, what's this?”
For the captain had already scrambled ashore, and as he uttered these words he stooped and intently examined the sand at his feet. In it were visible recent footprints, and a long trailing furrow that started from the water's edge and ran for several yards straight up the beach. Where the furrow terminated there lay a native ballam.
Jack was first to espy the canoe. Guessing the cause of the captain's sudden excitement, he ran up the sands to the spot where the rude vessel lay. The ballam was still dripping sea-water; and in it, amid a pool of blood, lay a sailors sheath-knife.
“The lascar!” he shouted, snatching up the blood-stained weapon, and holding it out at arms length, as Don and the captain hurried up; “we've landed in his very tracks!”
CHAPTER VI.—IN THE THICK OF IT.
Either the lascar's wound had not proved as serious as Jack surmised, or the fellow was endowed with as many lives as a cat. At all events, he had reached land before them, and in safety.
“Sharks an' sea-sarpents!” fumed the captain, Stumping excitedly round and round the canoe. “The warmint had orter been sent to Davy Jones as I ad wised. Howsomedever, bloodshed's best awoided, says you, Master Don, lad; an' so, shiver my keelson! here we lies stranded. What's the course to be steered now, I axes? That's a matter o' argyment, says you; so here's for a whiff o' the fragrant!”
Bidding his servant fetch pipe and tobacco, the captain seated himself upon the canoe and fell to puffing meditatively, his companions meanwhile discussing the situation and a project of their own, with many anxious glances in the direction of the adjacent jungle, where, for anything they knew to the contrary, the lascar might even then be stealthily watching their movements.