Kenneth and Peter watched them gain the path leading from the pier, ascend the now well-trodden path to the huts, and disappear from view. Presently one of the four came out, paced up and down before the barred windows for a few minutes, lit a cigarette, and sat down upon a pile of sacks under the veranda.
Very soon the same cause for the card-players' change of position made it painfully necessary for the chums to follow suit. The hollow was becoming an oven. Not only were the sun's rays beating fiercely down upon the hard rock, the ground was throwing out heat.
"It will be a case of sunstroke for the pair of us if we stop here," declared Kenneth, after a vain attempt to shield his head and neck with his hands. "I think it's safe to make a dash for it."
Peter grunted assent. He was feeling too hot and his throat was too parched to talk.
Taking full advantage of every bit of available cover, often crawling snake-like on their stomachs; dragging their thinly covered bodies and limbs over the sun-scorched rock; never daring to raise their heads more than a few inches from the radiating rocks, the fugitives made slow progress until they reached the belt of open ground. To gain the coco-groves this belt had to be covered. There was only one alternative: to skirt it on their right, but that meant having to approach within a few yards of the path between the pier and the huts and within full view of the latter.
It was literally adhaesit pavimento. The lads would have given almost anything for the delight of rolling in the mud of a football ground at home in exchange for that horrible nerve-racking crawl across the volcanic-dust-covered terrain.
They were about half-way across when the stillness of the sultry air was rent by the whip-crack report of a rifle. A bullet whined so close to the fugitives' heads (that is what it seemed to do) that they ducked and brought their faces in actual contact with the dust.
"Spotted!" thought Kenneth, and a similar thought flashed across his chum's mind. Both were seized by an almost irresistible desire to leap to their feet and sprint across the remaining distance of about fifty yards to the shelter of the palms.
But before the impulse could be acted upon a heavy whirring sound almost overhead caused them with imprudent recklessness to look up.
Immediately above them was a huge bird, a member of the eagle family. It was the first feathered creature the chums had seen since their arrival at Boya, but it was no stranger to the pirates who had been left to take charge of the island during the Paloma's absence. Already the men had suffered from the depredations of the bird of prey, for it had flown off with a half-empty sack of maize on one occasion and, on another, with a bag of tobacco. The loss of the latter had roused the buccaneers to action, and they vowed vengeance upon the bird that had despoiled them of a much-prized luxury.
"Keep flat!" exclaimed Kenneth. "They're not potting at us!"
It was indeed fortunate that the fellow on guard outside the prison-hut had seen the bird, for the latter, flying silently, had been hovering over the two fugitives with the intention of attacking them, should the prone figures give promise of an easy prey.
Startled by the report and the whirr of the bullet the creature flew off, beating the air with its powerful wings. Followed by two more equally unsuccessful shots, it disappeared from sight behind a spur of a cliff.
Quick to take advantage of the situation and realizing that the man using the rifle was concentrating all his attention upon his winged target, Kenneth and Peter lost no time in crawling across the danger zone and gaining the shelter of the coco-palms.
For quite half an hour, they were too exhausted to speak or move. All they could do was to stretch themselves at full length on the comparatively cool earth, and enjoy to the full the grateful shelter afforded by the foliage.
They were thirsty. There was no water to be had. The growing coco-nuts contained plenty of cool and refreshing liquid, but as the nuts were thirty feet from the ground and the chums had not the strength to essay the difficult task of shinning up a trunk absolutely devoid of branches, the nuts were merely tantalizing objects.
Slight relief to their parched throats was obtained by chewing plucked herbage. A quarter of a mile away yams grew in fair quantities, together with a few taro roots, which, known to Canadians as sweet potatoes, formed an appetizing meal—only, like the coco-nuts, they were for the present unapproachable. To get to them meant traversing another belt of open ground within view of the huts.
"Think it safe to go to sleep?" inquired Kenneth.
"Yes; if we don't snore," replied his chum bluntly. "Bad habit of yours at times."
"You can't talk," retorted Kenneth. "'Tany rate, we'll risk it."
Crawling under a clump of brushwood, the two lads lay down and were soon in a dreamless slumber.
CHAPTER XXIII. A GOOD NIGHT'S WORK
The shadows had lengthened considerably when Kenneth awoke. Peter was still slumbering serenely, oblivious of the fact that he was in an almost destitute condition on an island in the hands of a band of unscrupulous ruffians.
Kenneth did not attempt to rouse his chum. He still felt so drowsy that he was inclined to go to sleep again, with the slight comfort of knowing that he would not be unceremoniously turned out to stand a trick in the hot, confined stokehold of the Paloma.
As he lay gazing up at the tangled brushwood overhead, he noticed what appeared to be a detached mass of green foliage entangled in sun-dried scrub. It was a coco-nut. Kenneth could have sworn that it was not there when the chums crawled to their sleeping-place in the undergrowth.
Overjoyed at their good-fortune, Kenneth woke his companion. Peter took the nut, stripped off the enclosing leaves and regarded the green husk dubiously.
"It's like having a tin of bully-beef and no opener," he remarked. "How are we going to get at the thing?"
"Break it against a stone," suggested Kenneth.
"And lose the milk. That won't do at all," protested his chum.
"I can't think of any other way," rejoined young Heatherington. "If we had a knife——"
"No use wishing," said Peter. "Smash the thing, then. We may save some of the juice, and there's the nut to eat."
Without further delay, beyond reassuring themselves to the best of their belief that no one was about, they pounded the nut against a piece of rock. At the third attempt the shell broke. They saved about half a pint of the liquid, looked for the nut and found nothing! Accustomed to coco-nuts as sold at home they were not aware that in its growing state the shell contains nothing but milk.
"Rotten swiz!" exclaimed Peter disappointedly.
"Better than nothing," replied his companion, as he finished his share of the refreshing liquid. "Next time we'll have a knife to work the oracle."
"Knife!" ejaculated Peter. "What do you mean?"
"I said 'a knife'," declared Kenneth deliberately. "As soon as it gets dark, I'm going to pay a visit to the huts. All we've got to look out for is the sentry, and ten chances to one he'll be asleep. They don't seem to have been warned we're adrift, so the Paloma sailed without our disappearance being discovered."
"Bit risky, isn't it?"
"Yes," agreed Kenneth soberly. "But we can't hang on here indefinitely without things. If I can find a bag of meal—I know where the provisions for the shore-party are kept—the pirates will find it missing in the morning."