pushes, and is answered by a groan. He puts his hand down to rise, and is answered by another groan.
"What's this?"
"All that are left of us," says Simon Evans of Clovelly.
"All?" The bottom of the boat seemed paved with human bodies. "Oh God! oh God!" moans Amyas, trying to rise. "And where—where is Frank? Frank!"
"Mr. Frank!" cried Evans. There is no answer.
"Dead?" shrieks Amyas. "Look for him, for God's sake, look!" and struggling from under his living load, he peers into each pale and bleeding face.
"Where is he? Why don't you speak; forward there?"
"Because we have nought to say, sir," answered Evans, almost surlily.
Frank was not there.
"Put the boat about! To the shore!" roars Amyas.
"Look over the gunwale, and judge for yourself, sir!"
The waves are leaping fierce and high before a furious land-breeze. Return is impossible.
"Cowards! villains! traitors! hounds! to have left him behind."
"Listen you to me, Captain Amyas Leigh," says Simon Evans, resting on his oar; "and hang me for mutiny, if you will, when we're aboard, if we ever get there. Isn't it enough to bring us out to death (as you knew yourself, sir, for you're prudent enough) to please that poor young gentleman's fancy about a wench; but you must call coward an honest man that have saved your life this night, and not a one of us but has his wound to show?"
Amyas was silent; the rebuke was just.
"I tell you, sir, if we've hove a stone out of this boat since we got off, we've hove two hundredweight, and, if the Lord had not fought for us, she'd have been beat to noggin-staves there on the beach."
"How did I come here, then?"
"Tom Hart dragged you in out of five feet water, and then thrust the boat off, and had his brains beat out for reward. All were knocked down but us two. So help me God, we thought that you had hove Mr. Frank on board just as you were knocked down, and saw William Frost drag him in."
But William Frost was lying senseless in the bottom of the boat. There was no explanation. After all, none was needed.
"And I have three wounds from stones, and this man behind me as many more, beside a shot through his shoulder. Now, sir, be we cowards?"
"You have done your duty," said Amyas, and sank down in the boat, and cried as if his heart would break; and then sprang up, and, wounded as he was, took the oar from Evans's hands. With weary work they made the ship, but so exhausted that another boat had to be lowered to get them alongside.
The alarm being now given, it was hardly safe to remain where
