"Don't touch her, Cap'n, sir," urged the Bo's'n. But the deed was already done. The Skipper had turned her gently round and had led her back to the pillars, where Lacelle met her, and together they vanished in the gloom.
"That thing's hereabouts somewhere," whispered the Bo's'n in my ear.
"Well, if you will be a fool!" said I.
"She's all right now, I think," said the old man. "Hope she'll sleep and wake up all right."
I noticed that the Bo's'n shrank from the Skipper as he came near—in fact, I had noticed it many times of late, and I was convinced that there was something in the mere presence of the ring which affected this man's mental attitude.
"Suppose we sleep now for a while?" suggested the Skipper.
He started to stretch himself near the Bo's'n, but the man jumped to his feet.
"I can't sleep," said he; "I'm wakeful. I will go out, sir, and take a stroll around."
"Look out for snakes!" murmured the Skipper sleepily, in a teasing voice. The Bo's'n shuddered and bounded from the cave. I wondered where between the Skipper and the wilds of the forest the Bo's'n would find rest for the sole of his foot.
The young Englishman, of whom we were taking care as we would of a baby, was lying on his couch of ferns in a remote corner. All that day one or the other of us played the part of nurse, and many a time I wished for the Minion, only that he might take his share of such work. The lad was delicate to begin with, and God knows what he had suffered on board the pirate craft before they triced him up and left him for dead. I found from his later account that he had suffered from an affection of the lungs, and that his mother had sent him on a sea voyage to Algiers, hoping that the change would benefit him. The ship had been captured off the coast of Portugal, and was never heard of more. The lad knew her fearful fate. The boy and the Smith, a servant from his mother's estate, were allowed to live, for what, God alone knows. They had been on board the pirate ship now for six months or more, and the lad had become weaker and more weak from the hardships that he had undergone and the coarse duties that he was obliged to perform. His being left to hang until he died in that devil's cavern was the final straw which broke his spirit. He knew of no possible succour from the cave of death. He could not hope for aid. He did not even know that I was to be left to bear him company. And what good that would have been, except that he could for a time have had some human companionship, I could not determine. I, on the contrary, knew that my friends were under the same roof with myself, and, though I did almost despair and become lost to living impressions through bodily terror of those horrid creatures which had been let loose upon me, still way down in my heart there was, I now know, a faint hope that some one would come to my rescue. Thinking these thoughts caused me to arise and go to the place where the lad lay and put some water to his lips. He drank gratefully, but did not raise his lids nor look at me. And then, dead tired, I threw myself upon my couch of leaves.