, I began to believe it; nevertheless, there were men on the shore
before us, halloaing madmen, with clasp-knives in their hands and
murder in their faces. Clear in the moonlight you could see them; the
still air sent up their horrid imprecations. Those men we must pass, I
said, if we would reach the boat. And we passed them. It seems a
miracle even when I write of it.

Now, we had halted at the foot of the ravine and were just prepared to
go headlong for the six, believing, it may be, that one at least of us
must fall, when they fired a shot, not from the gun at the watch-tower
gate, but from Czerny's own yacht away in the offing; and coming plump
down upon the sand, not a cable's length from our own boat, a shell
burst with a thunderous explosion, and scattering in fragments of
steel, it scared the mutineers as no rifle could have done. Roaring out
like stricken bulls, cursing their master in all tongues, they began to
storm the cliff-side nimbly and to run for the shelter of the woods;
but some fell and rolled backward to the sand, some turned on their own
knives and lay dead at the gully's foot; while those who gained the
summit stood all together, and wailing their doleful song they yelled
defiance at Czerny's ship.

But we--we made the boat; and falling half-dead in it, we thrust it
from the beach and heard our comrades' voices again.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE END OF THE SIXTY HOURS

_The same night. Off Ken's Island. Half-past twelve o'clock._

We have not returned to the watch-tower rock, nor can we bring
ourselves to that while there is any hope left to us of helping those
whom Czerny marooned on the dangerous shore. Our gig drifts lazily in a
pool of the whitest moonlight. We can still make out the ship's boats
lying about Czerny's yacht, and the angry crews which man them. From
the beach itself rises up the mutineers' wail of agony, like a wild
beast's cry, at one time loud and ferocious, then dying away in a
long-drawn cry, which haunts the ear. Ever and anon, as the mood takes
them, the gunners on Czerny's yacht let fly at us with their erring
shells; but they smite the air or hurt the water, or drop the bounding
fire on the shimmering spread of sand beyond us. Perhaps it is that
this employment occupies the minds of the longboats' crews and keeps
them from reckoning with the master who has befooled them. They, at
least, are at the crisis of their peril. Afloat there on a gentle swell
they must know that