The Keepers of the King's Peace Part 15

"Thank goodness!" said Bones, relieved. "You're a jolly old accountant, Ali. I'd never have found it."

"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision of intricate detail. This is due to subjects' lack of concentration."

"Have it your way," said Bones, "but get the statement out for me to copy."

He awoke the girl from a profound reverie--which centred about shy and solemn bachelors who adopted whole nations of murderous children as their own--and proceeded to "take charge."

This implied the noisy issuing of orders which n.o.body carried out, the manipulation of a telescope, anxious glances at the heavens, deep and penetrating scrutinies of the water, and a promenade back and forward from one side of the launch to the other. Bones called this "pacing the bridge," and invariably carried his telescope tucked under his arm in the process, and, as he had to step over Pat's feet every time, and sometimes didn't, she arrested his nautical wanderings.

"You make me dizzy," she said. "And isn't that the island?"

In the early hours of the afternoon they re-embarked, the _capita_ of the village coming to the beach to see them off.

They brought back with them a collection of spear-heads, gruesome execution knives, elephant swords, and wonder-working steel figures.

"And the lunch was simply lovely, Bones," agreed the girl, as the _Wiggle_ turned her nose homeward. "Really, you can be quite clever sometimes."

"Dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones, "you saw me to-day as I really am.

The mask was off, and the real Bones, kindly, thoughtful, considerate, an'--if I may use the word without your foundin' any great hope upon it--tender. You saw me free from carkin' care, alert----"

"Go along and finish your accounts, like a good boy," she said. "I'm going to doze."

Doze she did, for it was a warm, dozy afternoon, and the boat was running swiftly and smoothly with the tide. Bones yawned and wrote, copying Ali's elaborate and accurate statement, whilst Ali himself slept contentedly on the top of the cabin. Even the engineer dozed at his post, and only one man was wide awake and watchful--Yoka, whose hands turned the wheel mechanically, whose dark eyes never left the river ahead, with its shoals, its sandbanks, and its snags, known and unknown.

Two miles from headquarters, where the river broadens before it makes its sweep to the sea, there are three islands with narrow pa.s.sages between. At this season only one such pa.s.sage--the centre of all--is safe. This is known as "The Pa.s.sage of the Tree," because all boats, even the _Zaire_, must pa.s.s so close beneath the overhanging boughs of a great lime that the boughs brush their very funnels. Fortunately, the current is never strong here, for the pa.s.sage is a shallow one. Yoka felt the boat slowing as he reached shoal water, and brought her nearer to the bank of the island. He had reached the great tree, when a noose dropped over him, tightened about his arms, and, before he could do more than lock the wheel, he was jerked from the boat and left swinging between bough and water.

"O Yoka," chuckled a voice from the bough, "between sunrise and moonset is no long time for a man to be with his wife!"

Bones had finished his account, and was thinking. He thought with his head on his hands, with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, and his thought was accompanied by strange guttural noises.

Patricia Hamilton was also thinking, but much more gracefully. Boosoobi sat by his furnace door, nodding. Sometimes he looked at the steam gauge, sometimes he kicked open the furnace door and chucked in a few billets of wood, but, in the main, he was listening to the soothing "chook-a-chook, chook-a-chook" of his well-oiled engines.

"Woo-yow!" yawned Bones, stretched himself, and came blinking into the sunlight. The sun was nearly setting.

"What the dooce----" said Bones. He stared round.

The _Wiggle_ had run out from the mouth of the river and was at sea.

There was no sign of land of any description. The low-lying sh.o.r.es of the territory had long since gone under the horizon.

Bones laid his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping girl, and she woke with a start.

"Dear old s.h.i.+pmate," he said, and his voice trembled, "we're alone on this jolly old ocean! Lost the steersman!"

She realized the seriousness of the situation in a moment.

The dozing engineer, now wide awake, came aft at Bones's call, and accepted the disappearance of the steersman without astonishment.

"We'll have to go back," said Bones, as he swung the wheel round. "I don't think I'm wrong in sayin' that the east is opposite to the west, an', if that's true, we ought to be home in time for dinner."

"Sar," said Boosoobi, who, being a coast boy, elected to speak English, "dem wood she no lib."

"Hey?" gasped Bones, turning pale.

"Dem wood she be done. I look um. I see um. I no find um."

Bones sat down heavily on the rail.

"What does he say?" Pat asked anxiously.

"He says there's no more wood," said Bones. "The horrid old bunkers are empty, an' we're at the mercy of the tempest."

"Oh, Bones!" she cried, in consternation.

But Bones had recovered.

"What about swimmin' to sh.o.r.e with a line?" he said. "It can't be more than ten miles!"

It was Ali Abid who prevented the drastic step.

"Sir," he said, "the subject on such occasions should act with deliberate reserve. Proximity of land presupposes research. The subject should a.s.sist rather than r.e.t.a.r.d research by pa.s.sivity of action, easy respiration, and general normality of temperature."

"Which means, dear old Miss Hamilton, that you've got to keep your wool on," explained Bones.

What might have happened is not to be recorded, for at that precise moment the s.s. _Paretta_ came barging up over the horizon.

There was still steam in the _Wiggle's_ little boiler, and one log of wood to keep it at pressure.

Bones was incoherent, but again Ali came to the rescue.

"Sir," he said, "for intimating SOS-ness there is upon steamer or launch certain scientific apparatus, unadjusted, but susceptible to treatment."

"The wireless!" spluttered Bones. "Good lor', the wireless!"

Twenty minutes later the _Wiggle_ ran alongside the gangway of the s.s.

_Paretta_, antic.i.p.ating the arrival of the _Zaire_ by half an hour.

The s.s. _Paretta_ was at anchor when Sanders brought the _Zaire_ to the scene.

He saw the _Wiggle_ riding serenely by the side of the great s.h.i.+p, looking for all the world like a humming bird under the wings of an ostrich, and uttered a little prayer of thankfulness.

"They're safe," he said to Hamilton. "O Yoka, take the _Zaire_ to the other side of the big boat."

"Master, do we go back to-night to seek Ko-boru?" asked Yoka, who was bearing marks which indicated his strenuous experience, for he had fought his way clear of his captors, and had swum with the stream to headquarters.