She heard this time--thank God!--for there was an immediate answering long-drawn cry of: "Dad-dee!" from the bows. We rowed quickly in that direction and saw a huddled shape drop from the rigging and run along the deck like the shadow of a little old man. I fired, missed the brute, and heard a sudden scream of terror from Molly as it rushed on all fours towards her.
Another cry from the bows, the sudden appearance of a slight, girlish figure on the deck rail, a splash, a bump as our canoe struck the ship's side--and Molly was saved!
With my own hands, I hauled her in--surely the most precious burden that a man ever landed from the dark, mysterious sea.
"Daddy!" she wept, as she clung to me in her dripping clothes. "Oh! I am glad you were here!" And then, with a swift dismissal of all thought of her own plight: "Where's Captain Morgan?"
Without waiting for a reply, she raised her hands, cup-shaped, to her mouth.
"Captain Morgan!" she called. . . . "Here we are!"
No answer. But as we strained our ears for some sound of life on the dark and silent vessel which loomed above us, we heard a thud and the muffled curse of a man in difficulties. Then something hard and metallic struck the mast and fell to the deck with a crash.
Thrusting the canoe away from the ship's side, I shouted again:
The words were no sooner out of my mouth than over he came, striking the water within a couple of yards of our boat.
We dragged him aboard, as though he were some huge, wet fish, thrown up unexpectedly from the deep; and then we held a council of war.
To have attempted to locate and shoot an enraged gorilla on board a vessel which was a hive of shelters and shadows would have been running risks that no one but a lunatic would have faced. Far simpler and safer to wait until morning. The gorilla is not an animal which will swim, even under the greatest provocation. Consequently, there was no fear of his taking his glands away with him in the dead of night.
"Do you think any of the others have escaped?" I asked Captain Morgan.
"Can't say! That fellow was most likely the one we had to put by himself because of his vile temper. If he is one of the twenty in the big cage, then the rest of them must be free--or soon will be!"