“Well,” said Tom, “if we do have to pay tribute to Neptune, I hope we won’t be so badly off as the poor fellow who, the first hour, was afraid he was going to die, and, the second hour, was afraid he couldn’t die.”
“Don’t fret about dying, boys,” put in the ship’s doctor, a jolly little man, with a paunch that denoted a love of good living; “You fellows are so lucky that they couldn’t kill you with an axe. Though that knife did come pretty near doing the trick, didn’t it? ‘The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, looking after the life of poor Jack,’ was certainly working overtime, when that Malay went for you to-day.”
“Yes,” returned Dick, “but he slipped a cog in not looking after the poor fellow that brute wounded first. By the way, doctor, how is he? Will he live?”
“O, he’ll pull through all right,” answered the doctor. “I gave his wound the first rough dressing before the ambulance took him away. Luckily, the blade missed any of the vital organs, and a couple of months in the hospital will bring him around all right. That is, unless the knife was poisoned. These beggars sometimes do this, in order to make assurance doubly sure. I picked up the knife as it lay on the pier, and will turn it over to the authorities to-morrow. They’ll have to use it in evidence, when the case comes up for trial.”
He reached into his breast pocket as he spoke and brought out the murderous weapon. The boys shuddered as they looked at it and realized how near they had come to being its victims. They handled it gingerly as they passed it around, being very careful to avoid even a scratch, in view of what the doctor had said about the possibility of it being poisoned.
It was nearly a foot in length, with a massive handle that gave it a secure grip as well as additional force behind the stroke. The hilt was engraved with curious characters, probably an invocation to one of the malignant gods to whom it was consecrated. The blade was broad, with the edge of a razor and the point of a needle. But what gave it a peculiarly deadly and sinister significance was the wavy, crooked lines followed by the steel, and which indicated the hideous wounds it was capable of inflicting.
“Nice little toy, isn’t it?” asked the doctor.
“It certainly is,” replied Bert. “A bowie knife is innocent, compared with this.”
“What on earth is it,” asked Dick, “that makes these fellows so crazy to kill those that have never done them an injury and that they have never even seen? I can understand how the desire for revenge may prompt a man to go to such lengths to get even with an enemy, but why they attack every one without distinction is beyond me.”