w
minutes. Impatient of the delay, the fiery man struck him so savagely
with the spear-shaft that even his own comrades remonstrated.

"If I could only burst this cord!" growled Simkin between his teeth,
"I'd--"

He stopped, for he felt that it was unmanly, as well as idle, to boast
in the circumstances.

"We must have patience, comrade," said Stevenson, as he rose pale and
bloodstained from the ground. "Our Great Captain sometimes gives us the
order to submit and suffer and--"

A prick in the fleshy part of his thigh caused him to stop abruptly.

At this point the endurance of Jack Molloy failed him, and he also "went
in" for violent action! But Jack was a genius as well as a sailor, and
profited by the failures of his comrades. Instead of making futile
efforts to break his bonds like them, he lowered his hairy head, and,
with a howl and a tremendous rush, like a fish-torpedo, launched
himself, or, as it were, took "a header," into the fiery man!

"No fellow," as Jack himself afterwards remarked, "could receive fifteen
stone ten into his bread-basket and go on smiling!" On the contrary, he
went down like a nine-pin, and remained where he fell, for his
comrades--who evidently did not love him--merely laughed and went on
their way, leaving him to revive at his leisure.

The prisoners advanced somewhat more cheerfully after this event, for,
besides being freed from pricks of the spear-point, there was that
feeling of elation which usually arises in every well-balanced mind from
the sight of demerit meeting with its appropriate reward.

The region over which they were thus led, or driven, was rather more
varied than the level country behind them, and towards evening it
changed still further, becoming more decidedly hill-country. At night
the party found themselves in the neighbourhood of one of the
all-important wells of the land, beside which they encamped under a
small tree.

Here the prisoners were allowed to sit down on the ground, with one man
to guard them, while the others kindled a fire and otherwise arranged
the encampment.

Supper--consisting of a small quantity of boiled corn and dried flesh--
was given to the prisoners, whose hands were set free, though their
elbows were loosely lashed together, and their feet tied to prevent
their escape. No such idea, however, entered into the heads of any of
them, for they were by that time in the heart of an unknown range of
hills, in a country which swa