At his feet there lay a sailor's rough jacket, and, a little farther off, a cap--a common, blue-flannel thing, such as the mercantile sailor buys for a few pence at a Ratcliffe Highway slop-shop.
He stopped, regarding them--not with that agitation which the greatest romancer who ever lived has depicted as clutching at Crusoe's heart when he saw the footmarks, but, instead, with a feeling of astonishment; yet a feeling of astonishment which, he told himself, he, a sailor, ought not to experience.
'Do not all wrecks,' he muttered, 'send forth around them countless articles of débris, countless portions of the raffle that encumbers their decks? What more likely than that a sailor's jacket and a cap should have floated ashore?'
Then he stooped, and, feeling them, found that they were thoroughly dry, so that they must have been ashore for some hours at least, since even the fierce sun of the now declining day could not have dried them in less time, all soaked with water as they had been.
CHAPTER XXIV
[BEATEN! DEFEATED!]
'No,' he said to Bella some time later, and when he had returned to her, 'no other signs than these. Nothing,' while, as he spoke, he pointed to the jacket and cap at his feet. He had brought them with him after the discovery, thinking that perhaps they might be useful when the time came for them to set out in the quarter-boat, as he fully imagined they would have to do, thereby to reach some other island.
'Yet,' she whispered, 'if they, if this animal, too,' indicating Bengalee, who now, what with his being made prisoner by the rope and also by his long fasting, displayed a horrible state of nervous agitation, a state which frightened Bella and rendered even Charke very uneasy, 'if they could be thrown ashore, why not others? Mr. Charke, do you think there is any hope?'
'I cannot buoy you up by saying that I do think so,' he answered. 'Yet be assured of one thing--you will know soon now. To-morrow, at the first sign of dawn, I set out to accomplish the inspection of the other half of the island. It is smaller even than I thought; it will not take long.'
And at daybreak he roused himself to carry out his undertaking, though, even as he rose from the warm, soft sand on which he had lain, he knew, he felt sure, that he was going on a bootless task. Again and again he had told himself, through the night, that, even though Gilbert Bampfyld's body had reached the island, it had never done so with life in it. Yet he would make sure for her sake and for his.