“What has happened?” I asked in a whisper.
“The chief has been badly hurt,” he replied. “He lies in the poop cabin, bleeding, I fear, to death.”
“What!” I exclaimed; “bleeding to death?”
“Let me tell you——”
But I interrupted him sharply.
“I must see him at once,” I said, and I made my way to the poop, where, stretched on a couch of skins, lay my friend and master. As I bent over him he opened his eyes, and though the cabin was but dimly lighted, I thought he smiled. I took his hand and knelt beside him. My anguish was so keen that I could not speak.
“Ruari,” said he, and that great full voice of his had been changed into that of a babe; “is it you Ruari?”
“Yes; it is I,” replied I, finding nothing else to say, for words failed me.
“Ruari, I am dying,” said he simply, as one who knew the state in which he was, and feared not. “I have received the message of death, and soon must my name be blotted out from among the living.”
As he was speaking there was a rustling in the waist of the ship, and Grace O’Malley stood beside us.