Mr. Scarlett shrank from it and clutched his arm. "But it's there—I can feel it—I've felt it a hundred times in these last days."
Nicholson smiled, pulled up his sleeve, cut through the bandage, and showed him the signal halyard.
Mr. Scarlett gave a wild look at each of us, dropped the snake on the deck, bolted into the cabin, and we heard him sobbing like a child.
Nicholson yelled for Percy. "Brandy and soda for Mr. Scarlett."
"For all of us," I said, because we needed it.
Eventually Mr. Scarlett came back and asked to see the bracelet, handling it tenderly. He was much too disturbed to talk coherently, or to thank Nicholson or either of us. It was pitiful to watch him. He had not found his "bearings"; did not realize all that it meant to him, and kept on rolling up his sleeve to look at his bare arm as if he did not believe his own eyes.
He gave way again, buried his face in his lean hands, lying half over the table, which shook with his sobs. It was very distressing to watch.
"Can't we hoist that red flag, sir?" he asked presently, lifting a haggard face.
I nodded.
He jumped to our signal locker, picked out a red-and-white flag, tore off the white part like a maniac, bent it to the halyard, and hoisted it to our little yardarm, where it drooped in the heated air. Seizing a pair of glasses he watched the shore as though he expected Jassim to come paddling out. But Jassim did not come, and in his nervous condition Mr. Scarlett worked himself into a terrible state of agitation lest he had disappeared, and was, even now, preparing violent measures to regain the bracelet.