"What about that man?" he asked,
brusquely. "Where did he come from? . . . I suppose he is dead now," he
added in an envious tone.
"No, sir. He must have as many lives as a cat," answered Carter. "I will
tell you how it was. As I said before I wasn't going to give you up,
dead or alive, so yesterday when the sun went down a little in the
afternoon I had two of our boats manned and pulled in shore, taking
soundings to find a passage if there was one. I meant to go back and
look for you with the brig or without the brig--but that doesn't
matter now. There were three or four floating logs in sight. One of the
Calashes in my boat made out something red on one of them. I thought it
was worth while to go and see what it was. It was that man's sarong. It
had got entangled among the branches and prevented him rolling off into
the water. I was never so glad, I assure you, as when we found out
that he was still breathing. If we could only nurse him back to life, I
thought, he could perhaps tell me a lot of things. The log on which he
hung had come out of the mouth of the creek and he couldn't have been
more than half a day on it by my calculation. I had him taken down the
main hatchway and put into a hammock in the 'tween-decks. He only just
breathed then, but some time during the night he came to himself and
got out of the hammock to lie down on a mat.
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