"I have not forgotten her," said Cynthia. "I am hoping that those brutes will fall asleep; then I can go out and rescue her."
"What, from those honest sailors?" I asked. I could not resist it.
For some time I had been conscious of a distinct burning sensation in the palms of my hands. I could not account for it except that I had had my hands in salt water a great deal during the day, and, as we had been unprotected from the sun much of the time, I thought that the combination had affected them unpleasantly. However, no one had complained, and Cynthia's skin was certainly much more tender than mine. My palms itched incessantly, and when I rubbed them to quiet this unpleasant sensation, the skin suddenly puffed up and my wrists pained me intensely. My fingers swelled, and the pains shot up to my shoulders. I bore it without a word, hoping that it would soon abate. I would not have had Cynthia hear me complain for the entire world. I had been obliged to play the part of coward in her estimation too often during the last few hours to wish her to see another exhibition of that attribute from me. So when she whispered to me to pick up the blanket which had been trodden under foot, I seized the rough thing and handed it to her, though its contact seemed to scorch my flesh like living coals.
I had fancied that the men might drink themselves into a state of insensibility, but I did not dream that this condition would overcome them so speedily. In a very few moments after they had taken each one his allotted amount of the rum, each man had rolled over on the grass and laid there like a log—all but Tomkins, who was the last, according to lot, to be served. When he found that there was very little of the liquor remaining for him, he swore frightful oaths, and used such language as would have precipitated a general quarrel had not the rum taken an almost immediate effect upon those who had drank of it. His vile epithets fell upon unheeding ears so far as his mates were concerned, and, in fact, in a very few moments he, too, was breathing heavily.
"I never did a kind action in my whole blamed life," snarled Tomkins, "but what I got my come-uppance," and I must say that, painful as is the reflection, I have noticed much the same circumstance in my dealings with my fellow-men.
Before Tomkins had ended his grumblings his utterance became thick, and he followed his comrades to the borderland of death.
"Do you think they're asleep?" whispered Cynthia softly in my ear. Eleven distinct and stertorous snores answered her more plainly than any assurances of mine could have done, and a twelfth, from the interior of our tree, chorussed them and made the round dozen.
"Poor dear Uncle Tony! I had forgotten all about him. I remember now that he has not spoken for some time," said Cynthia in her gentlest voice.
She felt for her pillow and then for the old man's head. "Strike a light, Mr. Jones," she added, more kindly than she had spoken hitherto. I did as she requested, repeatedly striking my fire until she had made the unconscious Skipper comfortable. When this was accomplished we stepped outside. Although the sun was getting low, I found it difficult to face the glare and the heat after the darkness and cool seclusion of our hiding place.
The young captive was still endeavouring to pull her hands loose from the cords. They were black and swollen. I say black, for, though the girl was a Haïtien, she evidently had a mixture of French blood in her veins, being much lighter coloured than the men in whose custody we first discovered her. I thought that should she smile and her face recover from the storm of grief which had swept across it for the last half hour, she would be very pretty. She had soft, large eyes like a deer's, but they were swollen with crying, and her face was drawn with pain.