The affair finished just as the sun slipped up over the trees, with the canoes, such as had men to propel them, paddling away to the shore, while two others drifted downstream, with only dead and wounded men in them. The daylight showed half a dozen blacks, either dead or badly wounded, on the ship's decks, and the second engineer lying on the fidley with a gashed head and wounded thigh.
"And there's ane de'il ah hae made prisoner after a vera bonny fecht," said the Scotch bosun. "Ah'm thinking he's no' a'together a nigger. The scoondrel's a bit tae yellow."
They found the dago, lying on the main deck, panting and furious, clothed only in a loin cloth, with half a dozen of his own grass ropes around him.
"Sae ye're the captain o' this dirty crood, air ye?" observed the bosun critically, as the half-blood lay there swathed in the grass rope.
"Mon, ye started something outside yere weight. But perhaps ye'll be useful. When we've had a bite o' something tae eat, we shall want a few hondy niggers tae chop awa' the trees we've rinned upon, and mebbe ye can whustle up a few."
But while they were snatching a hasty scrap of food, the prisoner, unwatched for a few minutes, managed to partly wriggle out of the rope, and to crawl toward an open sally port.
They heard him splash over the side, and a moment later, as they saw him swimming, in spite of rope-encumbered legs, he was seen to suddenly turn over in the water and to cast a look of fear back at them. The next moment he gave a shriek, and sank from sight. A little eddy in the brown water showed only for a moment where he had disappeared.
"A crocodile," said Dean with a shudder. "And I swam over there myself last night. Poor beggar. When you're ready I should like to go ashore. I expect my office will be a bit upset."