“No, I don’t,” said Algy strongly, and roughly he shook off their hands. “I’m going through with this now. Blast it, those unmitigated blighters shot me up! I’ve jolly well got to meet them again, and I shall be fearfully vindictive about it. The cold water ’ll do me no end of good, and by the time we’re aboard the lugger I’ll be ready for anything.”
“Well, I’m glad jer nor worse ’urt, sir,” said Orace in a tone of encouragement. “But if I might just take yerrarm while yer gettin yer bref, so ter speak. . . .”
The girl also was not unwilling to let Algy have his own way; in the grimness of her purpose she was as incapable of sparing anyone else as she was of sparing herself.
“But we ought to get Carn,” she said.
“I went to look for the sleuth just before I started back,” Algy answered. “He hasn’t returned. We’ll have to do without him.”
The hope of legal reinforcements seemed to be receding, thought Patricia, as they set off towards the Pill Box. It appeared that she had been mistaken about Carn’s knowledge, for if he had been planning to make his coup that night he must have been on the spot by that time. And, since he was not, the management of the bun-fight was left entirely to the three of them.
In the Pill Box it was Algy who decided that the safest way to fix their rope was to pass it round a section of the wall, by way of two embrasures, tying it on the outside; though the actual work was left to Orace, as a man with some nautical experience. A change had come over Algy, sobering down his bubbling vapidness and turning him into a sensible man. It had been done by the bullet which had so nearly smashed him out of the adventure altogether—the fool had been stung by a hard fact, and it had brought out into the open the character which for years he had taken such pains to conceal. Automatically he rose from the ranks to a commission, with Pat as his only superior: Orace accepted the transformation philosophically.
They paid out the rope hand over hand, prone on the turf (by Orace’s advice) so as not to be visible from below, for the moonlight was strengthening. The rope itself ran down in a kind of big groove in the rock, so that as they descended they would be almost hidden in the shadow.
“It should be long enough,” said Algy. “I allowed plenty.” He was peeling off his raincoat, and stood in bathing costume like the other two. “Who goes first?”
“Final orders,” said Patricia—“tuck the artillery up in your belts and mind it doesn’t clank against the rock; don’t make one-millionth of a splash swimming; and don’t talk—you know how sound travels over water. Now, good luck to everyone! Follow your leader. . . .”