Syd Belton Part 60

"With pistols, of course, sir?"

"No, certainly not," replied Syd, decidedly. "If we have firing in the dark there may be some accident. Select five men. There will be yourself, Mr Roylance, and I shall be there too. Eight of us ought to hold him if he comes."

"And come he will, sir. You'll go over the island to-morrow?"

"Yes."

"But you didn't say you'd have another thing found."

"What?"

"Water, sir. If the _Sirius_ is going to leave us here, water must be had."

That was a serious matter. With the gale blowing there was nothing to mind as to the sun, but Syd felt that the heat would be felt terribly as soon as the wind sank, and with no slight feeling of uneasiness he went to his rough quarters, looked into the hospital, where the lieutenant lay muttering in his delirium, and beckoned Roylance to come and join in the meal.

"Takes one's appet.i.te away to see that poor fellow lying there," said Roylance, summoning one of the men to take his place.

"But we must eat to work," said Syd, firmly. "Here's Terry, I'll ask him to come and victual. I hate seeing him keeping aloof. Mr Terry, coffee is served. Will you join us?"

Terry started a little, and his face relaxed into a smile.

"Yes," he said quietly, "I am very hungry."

The ice was broken, and the three young fellows sat down to their rough meal, one which was, however, thoroughly enjoyed--Terry seeming quite to have forgotten the trouble that had caused the estrangement.

But Roylance had not, and that night he said to Syd--

"Don't trust him."

"Trust whom?"

"Terry. I may be wrong, but if ever a fellow's eyes looked one thing and meant another, his did this evening."

"Fancy. He's beaten, and he has given in, and so, I dare say, we shall be fairly good friends for the future."

"Perhaps so," said Roylance, dryly; "but I say, don't trust him all the same. Keep on your guard."

"Can't. Impossible; and I couldn't go on suspecting every one I saw."

"No, not every one--this one."

"Never mind that. Don't suppose I shall have any cause to distrust him."

"I hope you will not," said Roylance, prophetically.

"Come along."

"Where? It will be impossible to stand out of shelter."

"We are not going to. Ah, here is Strake. Now then, have you got your men ready?"

"Ay, ay, sir; but won't you alter your mind about the pistols?"

"Certainly not. Use your fists, and take the creature, whatever it is, alive."

"Ay, ay, sir," said Strake; and leading the way down to the lower gun, the men were posted among the rocks, and in the midst of the utter darkness, with the dull roar of wind and sea coming in a deep murmur, the watch was commenced.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

It was strange work keeping that watch, and Syd could not help feeling a sensation of dread master him at times. He knew that Roylance was close at hand, that he had but to speak and the old boatswain would come to him, while the men were scattered here and there; but all the same it was terribly lonely.

For what were they watching? It might be some wild beast with teeth and claws that would rend him if he were the one who seized it, and the longer he waited the more reasonable this seemed to be. It was a creature that lived in a cave, or some deep rift among the rocks by day, and came prowling out by night in search of food. Such a creature as this must be dangerous.

But the next moment he laughed to himself as he recalled that rabbits and many other creatures sought their food by night, and were innocent and harmless as doves. Yet still the feeling of dread came back, and he longed for an end of the watch.

"I like danger that I can see," he thought, as he began involuntarily rubbing his shoulder that had been struck by the shark, and had taken to aching in the moist cool night.

He shivered a little as he recalled the scene that day when he first realised the danger of the hideous fish marking him down; and try how he would the scene kept growing more vivid.

"I never half thanked those men for saving my life," he said to himself.

"The brute would have had me if they had not stabbed at it with the oars. What's that?"

He strained his eyes to watch something which appeared to be crawling along among the blocks of stone close by, but he could not be sure that it was anything alive.

"A stone!" he said, and he went on thinking, not liking to draw attention to what most likely was only imagination. "It would be so stupid," he said; "and would alarm the brute and keep it from coming, if I was wrong."

So he sat there, crouched up together, his back against the stone, and his arms round his knees, which formed a resting-place for his chin, till quite a couple of hours of watching and listening to the roar of the wind overhead and the beat of the sea beneath had pa.s.sed away.

"I wonder how Mr Dallas is," he thought at last; and as the scene in the rough canvas-covered shelter came to his mind's eye, with the tallow candle stuck in a corner of the rock, some of its own fat sealing it there, as they had no candlestick, he saw again the sunken cheeks and wild, fevered eyes of the wounded man, and pictured his white, cracked lips, and the tin pannikin of water placed ready on a box by where he lay.

There was some biscuit too, ready to soak and give him a few bits. He thought--"I wonder whether that man has given him any."

Another half-hour pa.s.sed, during which Syd had forgotten everything but his patient, and at last, full of anxiety, he felt that he must go and see him.

"No, I will not," he muttered, and he began watching again.

"How contented these sailors are," he said after a time; "how silently they sit keeping guard. I hope they are not asleep."

He crept softly in the direction where Strake was posted, and as he neared it he thought to himself that it was a good job he had told the boatswain not to bring firearms; but as the thought came he oddly enough regretted it.

"If the brute is dangerous it is not fair to the men. I was wrong. But they must be all asleep, or they would have heard me."

Click, click!

The c.o.c.king of a pistol close by.