us right round the highest peak, on whose very walls
we walked like chamois on a mountain crag. It was here, on a narrow
ledge high above the sea, that the Frenchman stopped for the first
time.

"Shipmates," said he, when he had got his breath, "journey done, all
finish, you safe here, you rest. I go down to see Governor; but come
back again, come back again, messieurs, with bread and meat."

Well, I don't think one of us had the voice to answer him. The place
itself--the ledge above the sea and the little low, cramped cave behind
it--occupied all our thoughts. Here, in truth, a man might lie safely
enough--yet in what a situation. The very door of the house opened upon
an abyss a thousand feet above the rocks below. We had the sea before
our eyes, the sea beneath us, the sea for our distant horizon. Day and
night the breakers thundered on the sword-fish reef; the wind moaned in
the mighty eaves of those tremendous crags. We were like men placed
suddenly on a steeple's side and left there to live or fall, as fortune
went.

I tell you this, plain and straightforwardly, because five days passed
on that awful ledge, and, except for one day, there is nothing but a
seaman's talk of question and answer and idle hope to set down on these
pages. If every hour of the day found one of us with eyes which yearned
for our lost ship, with hearts grown heavy in waiting and
disappointment--that was his affair, and of no concern to others. Be
sure we didn't confess, one to the other, the thought in our heads or
the future we must live through. We had come to Ken's Island to help
little Ruth Bellenden, and this fearful plight was the result of
it--ship gone, the island full of devils that would have cut our
throats for nothing and thought themselves well paid--no knowledge,
not the smallest, of any way of escape--food short and likely to be
shorter. Friends we had, true friends. Night and morning Clair-de-Lune
and the little girls found their way up to us with bread and meat and
the news that was passing. It was on the fifth thy that they came no
more, and I, at least, knew that they would never come again.

"Lads," I said, "one of two things has happened. Either they've been
watched and followed, or the time of which they made mention has come.
I trust the old Frenchman as I would trust my own brother. He knows how
it will fare with five men left on a lonely rock without food or drink.
If he doesn't come up here today, it's because