As Tom made the exclamation he started toward the distant boats; the two white men and the colored Jim were loading up their boat.
“What are you doing that for?” cried Tom.
He, as well as his slightly injured foot would allow, hastened over the coral. Cliff, his clothes carried in a rough, quickly snatched bundle, ran too. Nicky scrambled ahead of him.
But before they could get to the boats they saw Jim take the oars out of their boat, climb into his own, and thrust it rapidly backward—there was no depth to turn it around—down the channel.
“We’ll leave these oars on the island at the bend,” called Senor Ortiga. “We don’t want to leave you here to starve. Swim down or push your boat ahead of you and swim till you get the oars; then follow the markers; we’ll leave them, too. We don’t want to desert you, but we must. By the time you get out we can be safely away!”
Nicky and Cliff fought their way over the coral as fast as they could, stumbling into crevasses, almost falling as their incautious feet struck rises; but they saw that it was wasted effort.
They returned, to assist Tom.
Once the three were in their boat, far down the channel they saw the other boat turn and disappear around a bend.
“It will be dark, before we get there,” cried Tom, and he began to shudder and to forecast dire difficulties, but Cliff bade him, rather sharply, to stop.
“Remember what the teacher said, last term, about being afraid?” Nicky reminded Tom. “He said that when we became afraid we deadened our common sense and made pictures of dangers that wouldn’t exist at all unless we thought they did. He said it wasn’t what was dangerous that hurts us, but what we thought might happen. So—Tom—snap out of it!” He spoke rather curtly and slangily, to impress Tom the more quickly. Tom saw the sense in the rebuke and reminder and grinned sheepishly.