"I don't like to think about the time that followed. I think I was crazy for a time; I know I ranged up and down the beach like a madman. But I retained enough sense to know I couldn't swim against the tide. It was a miracle I kept afloat with the tide in that Arctic water, and me a lubberly swimmer. Then, after a long while—how long a time I don't know; each moment seemed an age—I stumbled upon MacLean's body. Poor Sails, he could not foretell his own finish!
"He—he couldn't have been quite dead when they threw him over, or he wouldn't have made the beach so quickly. But he was quite dead then. I took his knife from his hip—this is it I have here—because I felt I might have a chance to use it. God, how I longed for a chance to use it! Finding MacLean sort of steadied me; it shocked me sane, so to speak. The fog began to thin out, and I slipped into a cave.
"Pretty soon the fog lifted altogether, and it was a bright calm morning. Through the cave mouth, I could see the Japs parading the deck. But I didn't see them making preparations to get the ship under way, so I reasoned the ambergris was still ashore, and that they would come for it. So I just waited.
"You see, I thought it was all ended for the Happy Family. I knew Carew, and these yellow devils; I was sure you had all been killed, and that Ruth—oh, well, I was going to meet them when they came ashore, and do a little work with Sails' knife before they finished me.
"At last their whaleboat started for the beach. I was ready to show myself, when I noticed you in the party—you, alive. I thought if you were alive, some of the others might also be alive, and there might be something to hope for. So I lurked in the cave, and watched."
"I saw you!" interjected Martin. "Lord, what a start the glimpse of your face gave me! I knew you were alive, but I was convinced you were on board. I thought I was seeing ghosts."
"You went in through the Elephant Head, and I went after you," continued Little Billy. "The cave I was in (the one those fellows lived in, by the reek of the place) communicated with the passage you traveled, so I could fall in behind without going out on the beach. I trailed your party to the big cave, stopped just back of the light, and watched you cross the ledge. Then came that awful blast (did you notice it was steam, Martin?) and I saw you struggling with one of them, and you knocked another one over the edge, and I thought it was time for me to lend a hand. But the sight of me was too much for that fellow who held the line.
"Well, they are gone, poor devils. I suppose I should feel a bit sorry for them. But I don't. I know just what brutes they were. What surprises me, is that they didn't make a thorough job of it and slaughter all hands, instead of only three. What do they want of prisoners? Except—Ruth?"
"I am sure Carew prevented that," said Martin. He rehearsed the scene in the cabin. "Carew is wild about Ruth, and she has him bluffed, actually bluffed. If it had been left to Ichi, there, I am sure we all would have been killed, and the directions for finding the treasure tortured out of Ruth. But Carew protected her—and us. He hopes to gain her favor, to compel her to love him, or—at least accept him. He even hinted he would place all the rest of us safely ashore. I think he was lying."
"Depend on it, he was," asserted Little Billy. "Place you safely ashore on this island, I suppose, And conduct you to the edge of that hole, and personally chuck you in. That's Carew's style! My God, that is an awful hole, Martin! It got on my nerves. Listen, she's blowing again!"