Then he stood up and shrugged his shoulders.
“Ah, well!” he said, addressing the unconscious body, “seeing that you ain’t dead, you may as well live, but you don’t come round my house in a hurry again, or there won’t be any not quite dead about it—see?”
Blueneck opened his eyes for a second and then fell back again into unconsciousness.
Joe looked round him, heaved a sigh of relief and, as he strolled off up to the Ship, his face assumed once more its wonted good humour, his heavy sandy lashes fell half over his eyes as usual, and, thrusting his thumbs in his belt, he whistled as clearly, happily, and tunefully as a linnet in May.
CHAPTER XI
EVERYTHING on the shore was very dark and very silent when Blueneck regained consciousness and sat up. His head ached and his body was stiff and cold while his clothes, still wet and sticky with brine, clung to him uncomfortably.
He peered round in the darkness, striving to remember where he was and what had happened to him. There was no moon, or at least if there was it was so hidden behind the clouds as to be of no use to any one, and he could only faintly distinguish a kind of haze some quarter of a mile in front of him which he supposed was the sea. Behind him he could see nothing at all, only blackness. He put out a cold, trembling hand and felt cautiously about; the first thing he touched was the dry, crumbly seaweed. Not sure what it was he grasped a handful of it and pulled it up. Immediately the sickening stench of stale salt water arose and he spat and swore aloud. Then he reached out his other hand and touched still more seaweed. He groaned with stiffness and pain and threw himself back on the heap. As he did so his shoulders encountered something hard and he almost screamed aloud, so much did it jar him. Changing to a sitting posture again, he felt for the obstacle and found that whatever it was it lay beneath the seaweed. Wearily he pushed the stuff aside and thrust his hand into the clammy depths beneath. The hard thing was lower down still and he burrowed feverishly in a tired, thoughtless way, hardly knowing what he did or why he did it.
Suddenly he paused, and felt more gingerly, yes—surely he could not be mistaken, he was running his hand over the hard round belly of a rum keg. He twisted round quickly and winced as his stiffened muscles twinged at the movement. Beside the first keg he felt another; and yet another at the side of that. He lay back exhausted by the effort and wondered at his find. He had no doubt it was some smuggler’s private store, but was surprised that on such a lawless coast such secrecy should be resorted to. He knew that in Mersea everyone was more or less his own master and thought that it was therefore a rather unnecessary precaution.
When he had arrived thus far in his thoughts, however, he felt a return of the giddiness which he had before experienced and lay back, his eyes open, staring in front of him.
He had not lain so many minutes before he caught the glimmer of a light in the distance and he stared at it in surprise. It was not coming from the sea and was therefore not the riding light of a boat, neither was it coming from the direction of the brig or the Ship Inn, but from the west, from the lonely strip of coast between the little villages of East Mersea and West Mersea.