Out from under the awning crept a tall, lean, lithe brown man, dressed in torn sailor togs, but with a dirty turban around his head. He was a wild-eyed, yelling fiend. In a moment there flashed out of his dress, from some secret place, a long, glittering blade. With this raised above his head he bounded in his bare feet the length of the boat after me.
At that moment the boat from the Gullwing scraped alongside the wreck. As I whirled to escape this murderer, this boat was nearest to me. Thankful Polk, his red face transfixed with horror, shouted to me:
“Here, Sharp! Quick! This way!”
Their boat was really nearest me. I leaped into it. Thank shoved off with his oar and the boat and the wreck were separated by a growing streak of sea.
The men in both boats all talked at once; and the two Mr. Barneys shouted; but above all the uproar I could hear the frenzied shrieks of the brown man in the turban.
“Come back, here, Webb!” cried the second officer in the Seamew’s boat. “We’ll take that child with us.”
“Sit down, Clint!” commanded Mr. Jim Barney, quietly. “You’ll have us swamped.”
I obeyed him quickly. Thank smote me a hearty blow between the shoulders.
“Sharp! you’re a daisy! I knowed they couldn’t never drown you,” he declared.
But I couldn’t reply to him. I still held the girl in my arms. There seemed to be no good place there in the stern to lay her down. And she was so frail, and soft, and pretty! I had never seen such a delicate creature before.