so very bad, are you?"

Charlie's eyes closed and opened a couple of times.

"No can tell," he answered feebly; "hurt plenty big"; then he began to
cough.

Wilbur drew a sigh of relief. "He's all right!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, I think he's all right," assented Moran.

"First thing to do now is to get him aboard the schooner," said Wilbur.
"We'll take him right across in the beach-combers' dory here. By Jove!"
he exclaimed on a sudden. "The ambergris--I'd forgotten all about it."
His heart sank. In the hideous confusion of that morning's work, all
thought of the loot had been forgotten. Had the battle been for nothing,
after all? The moment the beach-combers had been made aware of the
meditated attack, it would have been an easy matter for them to have
hidden the ambergris--destroyed it even.

In two strides Wilbur had reached the beach-combers' dory and was
groping in the forward cuddy. Then he uttered a great shout of
satisfaction. The "stuff" was there, all of it, though the mass had been
cut into quarters, three parts of it stowed in tea-flails, the fourth
still reeved up in the hammock netting.

"We've got it!" he cried to Moran, who had followed him. "We've got it,
Moran! Over $100,000. We're rich--rich as boodlers, you and I. Oh,
it was worth fighting for, after all, wasn't it? Now we'll get out of
here--now we'll cut for home."

"It's only Charlie I'm thinking about," answered Moran, hesitating. "If
it wasn't for that we'd be all right. I don't know whether we did right,
after all, in jumping the camp here. I wouldn't like to feel that I'd
got Charlie into our quarrel only to have him killed."

Wilbur stared at this new Moran in no little amazement. Where was the
reckless, untamed girl of the previous night, who had sworn at him and
denounced his niggling misgivings as to right and wrong?

"Hoh!" he retorted impatiently, "Charlie's right enough. And, besides, I
didn't force him to anything. I--we, that is--took the same chances. If
I hadn't done for my man there behind the cabin, he would have done for
me. At all events, we carried our point. We got the loot. They took it
from us, and we were strong enough to get it back."

Moran merely nodded, as though satisfied with his decision, and added:

"Well, what next, mate?"

"We'll get back to the 'Bertha' now and put to sea as soon as we can
catch the tide. I'll send Jim and two of the other men across in the
dory with Charlie. The rest of us will go aro