The launch lay almost directly below us, and we could hear some of their conversation. I gathered that the luncheon party had gone on board a U-boat which had just arrived, to inspect the latest improvements. Something had gone wrong. They had submerged; and it seemed to be doubtful whether they could get her up again. That, of course, was why the house was deserted and our trespassing unforbidden. It was probably also the reason why the sentries had been absent, and had only just discovered our launch on their rounds. One of the sailors was aggrieved, it seemed to me, that no effort was being made to obtain other help for the submerged men than the island itself could lend. His best friend was aboard; and he thought it wicked not to give them a chance, even if it meant their internment. The red-bearded professor was explaining to him, however, in the most highly approved style of modern Germany, that his feelings were by no means logical; and that it was far nobler to sacrifice one's friends than to endanger the State.
"But, if the State is a kind of devil," said the sailor, who was a bit of a logician himself, "I prefer my friends, who in the meantime are being suffocated."
"That is a fallacy," the professor was answering. Then, from the direction of the house, there came a confused sound of shouting.
A fourth sailor came tearing down the beach like a maniac.
"Where are the clam-fishers?" he called to the three philosophers. "They are to be taken, dead or alive."
At the same moment, I saw the glint of the sun on the revolvers of several other men, who were advancing through the woods towards the beach, peering to right and left of them. Without a whisper between us, Duncan and I crawled off along the cliff, through the thick undergrowth.
Obviously, the submarine had come to the surface again, and the whole merry crowd was on our track. The island was not more than a quarter of a mile in diameter; and I saw no hope of evading our pursuers, of whom there must be at least twenty, judging from the cries that reached us. There was nothing for it, but to choose the best place for putting up a fight; and, as luck would have it, we were already on the best line of defense. The undergrowth between the cliff's edge and the woods was so thick that nobody could discover us, except by crawling up the trail by which we had ourselves entered. It proved to be the only way by which the cliff's edge could be explored, and we had a full half-mile of the island's circumference, a long ledge, only a few feet wide, on which we could crawl in security for the time being, till the hunt came up behind us. I remember noticing--even in those moments of peril--that the ground and the bushes were littered with big crab claws and clam shells that had been dropped and picked there by the sea gulls and crows; and I was thinking--in some queer way--of the easy life that these birds lead, when I almost put my hand on a human skull, protruding from a litter of loose earth, white flakes of shell and crabs' backs. Duncan pulled a heap of the evil-smelling stuff away with his clam-rake, and bared the right side of the skeleton. There was a half-rotten clam-rake in the bony clutch of the dead man. Evidently, somebody else had paid the penalty before us. The body had been buried, and rain, snow, or the insatiable sea-gulls had uncovered the yellow-toothed head.