Chapter 12 - Page 2

last night in those very waters?"

"Poor fellows," said the captain, with feeling, "Should they be cast up after our departure, I am sure, Mr. West, that you will have them decently interred."

I was about to make some reply when the mate burst into a loud guffaw, slapping his thigh and choking with merriment.

"If you want to bury them," he said, "you had best look sharp, or they may clear out of the country. You remember what I said last night? Just look at the top of that 'ere hillock, and tell me whether I was in the right or not?"

There was a high sand dune some little distance along the coast, and upon the summit of this the figure was standing which had attracted the mate's attention. The captain threw up his hands in astonishment as his eyes rested upon it.

"By the eternal," he shouted, "it's Ram Singh himself! Let us overhaul him!"

Taking to his heels in his excitement he raced along the beach, followed by the mate and myself, as well as by one or two of the fishermen who had observed the presence of the stranger.

The latter, perceiving our approach, came down from his post of observation and walked quietly in our direction, with his head sunk upon his breast, like one who is absorbed in thought.

I could not help contrasting our hurried and tumultuous advance with the gravity and dignity of this lonely Oriental, nor was the matter mended when he raised a pair of steady, thoughtful dark eyes and inclined his head in a graceful, sweeping salutation. It seemed to me that we were like a pack of schoolboys in the presence of a master.

The stranger's broad, unruffled brow, his clear, searching gaze, firm-set yet sensitive mouth, and clean-cut, resolute expression, all combined to form the most imposing and noble presence which I had ever known. I could not have imagined that such imperturbable calm and at the same time such a consciousness of latent strength could have been expressed by any human face.

He was dressed in a brown velveteen coat, loose, dark trousers, with a shirt that was cut low in the collar, so as to show the muscular, brown neck, and he still wore the red fez which I had noticed the night before.

I observed with a feeling of surprise, as we approached him, that none of these garments showed the slightest indication of the rough treatment and wetting which they must have received during their wearer's submersion and struggle to the shore.

"So you are none the worse for your ducking," he said in a pleasant, musical voice, looking from the captain to the mate. "I hope that your poor sailors have found pleasant quarters."

"We are all safe," the captain answered. "But we had given you up for lost--you and your two friends. Indeed, I was just making arrangements for your burial with Mr. West