Then she swung onto a Northerly course and disappeared swiftly beyond an island at the Northern side of the channel.
“They’ve shot those men who took our gold,” Nicky declared. “Sam, and Cliff, row there, quick! We ought to try to pick them up—maybe they’re badly hurt.” Sam and Tom dipped their oars with a will.
Cliff having donned his clothes, of course, before he took the oars as they rowed out from the treasure islet, took the tender’s light tiller from the floor where it lay while they navigated the shoal water, shipped it and its attached rudder, and steered so that the rowers could put more force into their strokes and thus cover the water more quickly.
They soon reached the spot, and saw several figures struggling with a third.
Sam and Nicky hailed. An answer came, “Jim, here, was knocked overside when he tried to scramble onto our ship. Help us get him to shore. His head hit the coral, we think! They sank the rowboat.”
They pulled close and with some difficulty the inert colored man was lifted over the gunwale and dropped into the tender’s bottom. Then Mr. Coleson, with a smarting flesh wound in his arm, and Ortiga, who was too busy expressing an unfavorable opinion of his renegade brother to examine his hurts, seemed to have escaped with a scratched hand.
They began to row toward the island but Nicky made a suggestion.
“Let’s pull for the wrecked _Senorita_,” he urged. “There’s most likely to be a medicine kit on board her, and food as well.”
It took quite a while to get back down the shore line to the point almost opposite the Shark River where the _Senorita_ had grounded; but when they got there Nicky’s prophecy proved to be correct and Senor Ortiga, when the surgical and medicinal appliances were brought, made an examination of Jim, and then dressed a rather bad scalp wound, bringing its edges together with surgical thread after washing it with antiseptics.
Jim came to himself before the bandaging was completed. Though weak and a little bit uncertain in speech, he was in no way permanently injured in his brain. Rest would restore his usual vigor and help nature to heal his hurt.
Weary and discouraged, because there was nothing to be done toward the recovery of their lost treasure, the chums, after a midnight meal, threw themselves onto bunks in the engine room, preferring these to more comfortable wall berths with the two white men who had done them so mean a turn.