"The man has been stabbed!" exclaimed Uncle Herbert. "Whatever does it mean?"
"Get another light—a hurricane lamp, there's one in the kitchen—and run the other man down. You winged him right enough, Herbert; he can't be far away."
The light was procured, and following a well-defined trail outside the door, we ran the other burglar to earth, in a shrubbery close to the garden gate.
Simultaneously, my uncle and I recognised him—it was the Brazilian seaman who had tried to stab my uncle on the wreck, and whom I had seen lying on the cliff path.
While my uncle covered him with a revolver, for he snarled viciously like a wounded animal at bay, my father relieved him of his knife, and, lifting him by their combined efforts, they carried him into the house; but before reaching the door he had fainted.
"He's shot through the fleshy part of his right leg," said my father. "Just put on a temporary bandage till we can attend to the other beauty. Whatever made them fight each other like that, I wonder?"
"I don't know," replied my uncle, ripping the man's trousers with a penknife and winding a long strip of linen round the wound, for the bullet had cut a clean hole right through the Brazilian's leg. "But you see there is something very mysterious in the manner in which this scoundrel has followed me up."
"Now for the other man," exclaimed my father. "I am afraid he has been badly hurt. Why, Herbert, you have had a gash yourself—look!"
"Pooh! A mere nothing. I hardly felt it."
"But it's bleeding pretty freely."