He paused to wipe away with a sunburnt hand a furtive tear.
"CHARLEY, my lad," he exclaimed, "this is unmanly. What would DARE DEATH DICK or THUNDER TIM say to such a show of water?"
He took the spade, and was about to throw it with violence to the ground, when his better nature triumphed, and he placed it, almost with reverence, on the bench beside him.
He was disturbed by a tap on the outer door—the door that faced the sea.
"Who's there?" he shouted, as he held in one hand a revolver, and in the other a bowie-knife of the usual fashion.
"Are you ready?"
It was a gruff voice, and yet there was something feminine about it. CHARLEY had never feared to meet a woman yet, and he did not now shrink from the encounter. However his training had made him cautious. It might be a trap of the bloodthirsty Indians—those Children of Nature who were known to indulge in any cruel subterfuge to secure the white men as their prey.
"Are you ready?" was repeated in the same gruff voice, but now the tone was one of entreaty. The speaker seemed to be imploring for a reply.
CHARLEY hesitated no longer. He put down the bowie-knife, and still holding the revolver, opened the door.
He started back! Yes, it was a woman who confronted him. But such a woman! Her face was weather-beaten and sunburnt. Her hair was grey, and there were pieces of sea-weed in the shapeless mass that once may have been called a bonnet. She was wearing a heavy serge dress that was dripping with the sea. On her huge feet were old boots sodden with sand and wet. She might have been of any age, from fifty upwards.