He had schooled himself to resist the opening given by this class of retort, so he turned to make some corrections in the scale of the sun-dial he had constructed, aided therein by daily observations with the sextant left by the former inhabitant of the cave.
Iris had been gone perhaps five minutes when he heard a distant shriek, twice repeated, and then there came faintly to his ears his own name, not "Jenks," but "Robert," in the girl's voice. Something terrible had happened. It was a cry of supreme distress. Mortal agony or overwhelming terror alone could wring that name from her lips. Precisely in such moments this man acted with the decision, the unerring judgment, the instantaneous acceptance of great risk to accomplish great results, that marked him out as a born soldier.
He rushed into the house and snatched from the rifle-rack one of the six Lee-Metfords reposing there in apple-pie order, each with a filled magazine attached and a cartridge already in position.
Then he ran, with long swift strides, not through the trees, where he could see nothing, but towards the beach, whence, in forty yards, the place where Iris probably was would become visible.
At once he saw her, struggling in the grasp of two ferocious-looking Dyaks, one, by his garments, a person of consequence, the other a half-naked savage, hideous and repulsive in appearance. Around them seven men, armed with guns and parangs, were dancing with excitement.
Iris's captors were endeavoring to tie her arms, but she was a strong and active Englishwoman, with muscles well knit by the constant labor of recent busy days and a frame developed by years of horse-riding and tennis-playing. The pair evidently found her a tough handful, and the inferior Dyak, either to stop her screams—for she was shrieking "Robert, come to me!" with all her might—or to stifle her into submission, roughly placed his huge hand over her mouth.
These things the sailor noticed instantly. Some men, brave to rashness, ready as he to give his life to save her, would have raced madly over the intervening ground, scarce a furlong, and attempted a heroic combat of one against nine.
Not so Jenks.
With the methodical exactness of the parade-ground he settled down on one knee and leveled the rifle. At that range the Lee-Metford bullet travels practically point-blank. Usually it is deficient in "stopping" power, but he had provided against this little drawback by notching all the cartridges in the six rifles after the effective manner devised by an expert named Thomas Atkins during the Tirah campaign.
None of the Dyaks saw him. All were intent on the sensational prize they had secured, a young and beautiful white woman so contentedly roaming about the shores of this Fetish island. With the slow speed advised by the Roman philosopher, the backsight and foresight of the Lee-Metford came into line with the breast of the coarse brute clutching the girl's face.