"Maybe you're right—we've got to do something or the air will be lousy with the bloody things. Let her rip—who's stopping?" he asked gruffly.
"Well—it looks like you were—you see I'm slim, you ain't, you'd shake the brush like a bull going through it, where I'd hardly make a leaf move—so I guess it's up to me to take a chance at being stung. However, I'm agreeable whichever way it is," declared Haynes quickly, with an attempt at indifference his eagerness but crudely simulated, though as a statement of simple fact his words admitted of no refutation and received the instant concurrence of Manton.
"I reckon you're right," said he simply. "Well, that's settled. Better beat it pronto! Give me ten minutes start to trail these damned things off—I'll angle around the hill. If you make it, draw in as close as you can about dusk and I'll be waiting at the edge of the brush, one whistle from each will do. Of course we can't tell a thing about what's going to happen, there ain't no sailing directions on this traverse. Just one sure thing" He stopped hesitantly for a second, then roughly thrust out his hand. "So long, mate," he added gruffly, and Haynes, extending his long sinewy hand, nervously grasped for a second his partner's thickmuscled fingers, saying hastily, "At dusk, mate—if I get through."
Then Manton, on the point of wheeling around, suddenly halted and exclaimed, "If we ain't forgot that muck!" as he nodded toward the little pyramid of dirty lumps.
"The ambergris? let it stay! I can't pack it anyway," snapped Haynes impatiently.
"No, that's so, you've got to go light. But I'll slide back and pick it up—load it in my shirt—two thousand is two thousand," said Manton almost apologetically.
"It's up to you. But for God's sake get off—every minute counts now," exclaimed Haynes angrily.
From where he stood, Haynes for a moment could trace the progress of his partner by the deliberate heedlessness of his going; and with him went the hateful droning, though soon but a resonant murmur as distance intervened, until it was entirely submerged in the brooding silence that seemed to the listener to have closed in upon him. Then with feverish alertness he commenced his own retreat, and bending low, he crept from the spot, a foot at a time and often halting to listen intently for the dread evidence of malignant pursuit; but never the faintest sound of the vicious creatures came to him, and gradually his face cleared of the terrible tension that had possessed it, and his movements from a furtive crawl became a rapid though careful passage that clove the masses of pliant growths with a touch so deft that there remained barely a quiver to evidence his going.
"Clear of that hell's roost! beat them to it!" cried Haynes exulting-ly, as he mopped the dripping sweat from his begrimed face with one ragged sleeve, and through the other shook a trembling fist at the dull green wall that wound its solid front in sinuous course around the island contour.
"You blasted freaks! you" he swore with intense bitterness; then, words failing him, he relapsed into a wrathful mumbling as he shipped the sculls in their rowlocks, and with long vigorous strokes pulled seaward until nearly half a mile lay between him and the terrible rock.
Although he had been expecting the whistle, yet its actual happening sped a stab of unreasoning terror through his high-tuned nerves. It was now almost dark—that is, as
