The sergeant-major and I accompanied him to the spot, and there we saw a ghastly sight. The unfortunate policeman lay dead, with his carotid artery severed, while his murderer was sprawled on his face about a couple of yards away, also dead, half the back of his head blown away. The sergeant-major turned the man over on to his back, and there, staring at us, was the Booghis from whom I had got the "male" kris a couple of years before; there was no mistaking the curious scar right across one side of his face.
Stooping, the sergeant-major picked up a kris which was lying close to the man's hand. He eyed it intently for a moment, wiped the blood off, and then, taking the blade between his thumb and forefinger, he handed me the hilt.
"The 'female' kris, Tuan," he said, politely.
"Jack Ashore."
By Albert E. Craft.
The airy assurance with which "Jack Ashore" gets into—and out of—serious scrapes has become almost proverbial. This story describes the adventures which befell a party of British seamen who went for a ramble in a Chilian port.
It was in the early months of 1896, and I was an able seaman on board the ship Micronesia, of Liverpool, then lying in the port of Antofagasta, Chile, where we were discharging a cargo of coals loaded at Newcastle, New South Wales. A quarter of a mile away was the French barque, La Provence, loading a cargo of saltpetre for Havre.