eck.

With utmost difficulty we loosed the thongs, but at last it was done.
We rigged a little swing and the Tonga boys slung the great inert body
over the side into the dory. Soon we had Huldricksson in my bunk. Da
Costa sent half his crew over to the sloop in charge of the Cantonese.
They took in all sail, stripping Huldricksson's boat to the masts and
then with the Brunhilda nosing quietly along after us at the end of a
long hawser, one of the Tonga boys at her wheel, we resumed the way so
enigmatically interrupted.

I cleansed and bandaged the Norseman's lacerated wrists and sponged
the blackened, parched mouth with warm water and a mild antiseptic.

Suddenly I was aware of Da Costa's presence and turned. His unease was
manifest and held, it seemed to me, a queer, furtive anxiety.

"What you think of Olaf, sair?" he asked. I shrugged my shoulders.
"You think he killed his woman and his babee?" He went on. "You think
he crazee and killed all?"

"Nonsense, Da Costa," I answered. "You saw the boat was gone. Most
probably his crew mutinied and to torture him tied him up the way you
saw. They did the same thing with Hilton of the Coral Lady; you'll
remember."

"No," he said. "No. The crew did not. Nobody there on board when
Olaf was tied."

"What!" I cried, startled. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said slowly, "that Olaf tie himself!"

"Wait!" he went on at my incredulous gesture of dissent. "Wait, I show
you." He had been standing with hands behind his back and now I saw
that he held in them the cut thongs that had bound Huldricksson. They
were blood-stained and each ended in a broad leather tip skilfully
spliced into the cord. "Look," he said, pointing to these leather
ends. I looked and saw in them deep indentations of teeth. I snatched
one of the thongs and opened the mouth of the unconscious man on the
bunk. Carefully I placed the leather within it and gently forced the
jaws shut on it. It was true. Those marks were where Olaf
Huldricksson's jaws had gripped.

"Wait!" Da Costa repeated, "I show you." He took other cords and
rested his hands on the supports of a chair back. Rapidly he twisted
one of the thongs around his left hand, drew a loose knot, shifted the
cord up toward his elbow. This left wrist and hand still free and with
them he twisted the other cord around the right wrist; drew a similar
knot. His hands were now in the exact position that Huldricksson's had
been on the Brunhilda bu