David spoke again, in little more than a whisper. “’Tis not all told; and now comes the worst—and the best, too. . . . When all was over on the old Hesperus, and we was makin’ ready to leave her, Uncle Whinn draws me into the chartroom. Without sayin’ anything he takes off his old coat and cap and puts on split new ones. After that, he takes down the life belt that hung above his bunk, and puts it on very careful. Then, at last, he speaks to me. ‘David,’ he says, ‘they’re nailin’ us skippers in these times, so maybe you and me shan’t meet again.’ And he holds out his hand. Hardly knowin’ what to say, I says: ‘Even if they do take ye prisoner, the war won’t last for ever and ever, and maybe ye’ll escape afore long.’ He shakes his head, smilin’ a little. ‘If they takes me, they takes the consequences, and so does I.’ And then he tells me his secret— God! to think o’ the man’s pluck!”
David wiped his face.
“My Uncle Whinn says to me: ‘My lad, I thought to tell nobody, but ’twould be too lonesome-like for me to go like that. But ye needn’t make a story about it. . . . This here life belt,’ says he, ‘was my own idea. ’Tisn’t made o’ corks. T’is made o’ high, powerful explosive—enough to wreck a battleship. And all I ha’ got to do is just to pull this little bit o’ string.’ . . .”
J. J. Bell.
AMINA
Waldo, brought face to face with the actuality of the unbelievable—as he himself would have worded it—was completely dazed. In silence he suffered the consul to lead him from the tepid gloom of the interior, through the ruinous doorway, out into the hot, stunning brilliance of the desert landscape. Hassan followed, with never a look behind him. Without any word he had taken Waldo’s gun from his nerveless hand and carried it, with his own and the consul’s.
The consul strode across the gravelly sand, some fifty paces from the southwest corner of the tomb, to a bit of not wholly ruined wall from which there was a clear view of the doorway side of the tomb and of the side with the larger crevice.
“Hassan,” he commanded, “watch here.”
Hassan said something in Persian.
“How many cubs were there?” the consul asked Waldo.