“Sacré bêtes Anglais! How dare you venture here? This is our island, far better than your miserable Malta. We have taken possession of it, and will hold it against all the world. Begone with you, or we will sink you, and your ship to the bottom; off, off.”
As they were uttering these words, they continued making the most violent gestures of defiance and contempt, but this did not prevent Linton from approaching the rock. It was larger than it had appeared to be at a distance; and at the spot to which he was making there was a little indentation where the water was comparatively smooth. I have said that there was a group of men in front of a tent, at the higher part of the rock, and these they now observed, were armed, and had thrown up a sort of fortification, with planks and chests, and spars, and other things cast on shore from the wreck, aided by the natural inequality of that part of the rock.
“Good Heavens!” thought Linton. “And on so small a spot of ground, could not these men rest at peace with each other?”
Just as the dinghy was within two boat-hooks’ length of the rock, a voice from among the group, hailed in English,—“Take care, sir, or those fellows will murder you all. They have been threatening to do it. But if we could but get up a few drops of water here, we should soon be able to quiet them.”
“I have the water for you, and I will try what I can do to pacify them,” shouted Linton, at the top of his voice. “A present, mes amis” he said in French; “we have come here as friends to aid you; we do not want to take your island, to which you are welcome; and to convince you that we do not come as enemies, any two of you can go off to the large boat there, where they may have as much food and water as they require.”
Two of them rather more sane than the rest, on hearing this, shouted out,—“Food and water, that is what we want—you are friends, we see—we will go.”
“No, no—if any go, all shall go!” exclaimed the rest, rushing down to the water; but, so blind was the eagerness of the mass that these were precipitated headlong into the sea, and would have become food for the ground sharks had not Linton and his companions hauled them into the dinghy. He was now afraid that he should be obliged to return at some risk with the boat thus heavily laden, but before doing so he determined to make one more attempt to join the people on the top. His first care, before letting the boat again drop in, was to pour a few drops of brandy-and-water down the throats of the two Frenchmen they had rescued. This so revived them, and with their immersion in the water, so restored their senses, that they rose up in the boat and shouted out to their companions:—“These men are friends—receive them as brethren among you, and we will be answerable for their honesty.”
“Now, messieurs, is your time,” said one. “Hasten, if you desire to get on shore, or their mood will change.”
“Pull in,” cried Linton, and in another moment he and Raby, who carried a breaker of water on his shoulder, sprang on shore while the boat was hauled back to the cutter.
There they stood for an instant confronting the most ferocious looking beings it is possible to conceive in human shape. Their beards were long, and their hair wet and tangled, and hanging down over their shoulders, their eye-balls were starting from their heads, and their limbs were emaciated in the extreme, lacerated, and clotted with blood and dirt—scarcely any of them having a rag of clothing to cover them.