t waist high when
we reached the voyagers, so that we had no fear of sharks. The
new-comers were huddled together on as rudely fashioned a raft as it had
ever been my lot to see, and had it not been for the astonishing
tranquillity of the sea it is hard to believe that they could have made
a hundred yards without coming to pieces. They all leaped into the water
now, and between us we ran the crazy raft on to the beach, Lancelot and
I doing the most part of the work, for the poor wretches that had been
on board of her seemed to be sorely exhausted and scarcely able to speak
as they splashed and staggered through the shallow water to the shore,
where Marjorie was waiting anxiously for us.

They did speak, however, when once they were safely on dry land and had
taken each a sip from our water-bottles, for all their throats were
parched and swollen with thirst. It was a terrible tale which they had
to tell, and it made us shiver and grow sick while they told it. I will
tell it again now, not, indeed, in their words, which were wild,
rambling, and disconnected, but in my own words, making as plain a tale
of it as I can, for indeed it needs no skill to exaggerate the horror of
it.

CHAPTER XXV

THE STORY FROM THE SEA

In few words, it came to this. The sailors on the island had proved
themselves to be as bloody villains as had ever fed the gallows. They
had taken the unhappy colonists by surprise and had massacred them, all
but the women and the children. As for the women--poor things!--it would
have been better for them if they had been killed with the others, but
their lives were spared for greater sorrows. Those who told us that tale
were all that were left, they said, of the unhappy company. They had
escaped by mere chance to the woods, and had fashioned with their axes
the rough raft and oars which had conducted them at last to us and to
temporary safety.

This was their first raw story. Horrid as it was it took a stronger
horror when one of the men shouted a curse at Cornelys Jensen.

'Cornelys Jensen!' I cried. 'Cornelys Jensen--Cornelys Jensen is dead,
and the seas have swallowed him.'

The man who had uttered his name gave a great groan.

'Would to Heaven they had,' he said. 'But Heaven has not been so
merciful. That tiger still lives and lusts for blood.'

Marjorie and Lancelot and I glanced at each other in amazement, and the
same thought crossed all our minds--that fear and grief had crazed the