I had plenty of time to run away. I do not know why I did not do so; but the fact stands that I remained where I was until they had finished Captain Selover. Then I took to my heels, but was soon cornered. I drew my revolver, remembered that I had emptied it in the seal cave--and had time for no more coherent mental processes. A smothering weight flung itself on me, against which I struggled as hard as I could, shrinking in anticipation from the thirsty plunge of the knives. However, though the weight increased until further struggle was impossible, I was not harmed, and in a few moments found myself, wrists and ankles tied, beside a roaring fire. While I collected myself I heard the grate of a boat being shoved off from the cove, and a few moments later made out lights aboard the _Laughing Lass_.

The looting party returned very shortly. Their plundering had gone only as far as liquor and arms. Thrackles let down from the cliff top a keg at the end of a line. Perdosa and the Nigger each carried an armful of the 30-40 rifles. The keg was rolled to the fire and broached.

The men got drunk, wildly drunk, but not helplessly so. A flame communicated itself to them through the liquor. The ordinary characteristics of their composition sprung into sharper relief. The Nigger became more sullen; Perdosa more snake-like; Pulz more viciously evil; Thrackles more brutal; while Handy Solomon staggering from his seat to the open keg and back again, roaring fragments of a chanty, his red headgear contrasting with his smoky black hair and his swarthy hook-nosed countenance--he needed no further touch.

Their evil passions were all awake, and the plan, so long indefinite, developed like a photographer's plate.

"That's one," said Thrackles. "One gone to hell."

"And now the diamonds," muttered Pulz.

"There's a ship upon the windward, a wreck upon the lee,
_Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e_,"

roared Handy Solomon. "Damn it all, boys, it's the best night's work we ever did. The stuff's ours. Then it's me for a big stone house in Frisco O!"

"Frisco, hell," sneered Pulz, "that's all you know. You ought to travel. Paris for me and a little gal to learn the language from."

"I get heem a fine _caballo_, an' fine saddle, an' fine clo's," breathed Perdosa sentimentally. "I ride, and the silver jingle, and the _senorita_ look----"

Thrackles was for a ship and the China trade.

"What you want, Doctor?" they demanded of the silent Nigger.

But the Nigger only rolled his eyes and shook his head. By and by he arose and disappeared in the dusk and was no more seen.

"Dam' fool," muttered Handy Solomon. "Well, here's to crime!"

He drank a deep cup of the raw rum, ............