Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/56

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN "Yes." said the captain, "there is a chance. Rynders may come back before the Rackbirds discover us, and even if two or three of them find out our retreat, I may be able to dispose of them, and thus give us a little more time. That is our only ground of hope. Those men are bound to come here sooner or later, and everything depends upon the return of Rynders."

"But," urged Miss Markham, "perhaps they may not come so far as this to look for the runaway. The waves may have washed out his footsteps upon the sand. There may be no reason why they should come up to this plateau."

The captain smiled a very sombre smile. "If any of them should come this way," he said, "it is possible that they might not think it worth while to cease their search along the beach and come up to this particular spot, were it not that our boat is down there. That is the same thing as if we had put out a sign to tell them where we are. The boat is hauled up on shore, but they could not fail to see it."

"Captain," said Miss Markham, "do you think those Rackbirds killed the three sailors?" "I am very much afraid of it," he answered. "If they did, they must have known that these poor fellows were survivors of a shipwreck, and I suppose they stole up behind them and shot them down or stabbed them. If that were so, I wonder why they have not sooner been this way, looking for the wreck, or, at least, for other unfortunates who may have reached shore. I suppose, if they are making this sort of a search, they went southward. But all that, of course, depends upon whether they really saw Davis 44