Carew assented to this proposal, and prepared himself for the journey by placing his sheath-knife and loaded revolver in his belt. Baptiste watched him curiously, and wondered whether this eccentric Englishman had at last summoned up resolution, and was about to despatch the prisoners outright, as being a more merciful proceeding than allowing them to starve to death. Baptiste ventured no remark on the subject, for he observed that his captain was in a taciturn and absent-minded mood; and there was a peculiar, far-off look in his eyes that the Frenchman could not understand, not knowing that Carew had been dosing himself for the last few days with laudanum from his medicine chest, in the vain hope that the drug might numb the tortures of his conscience. The dinghy was got overboard, and while Carew sat in the sternsheets, Baptiste took the oars and pulled leisurely across the smooth ocean swell. While they were yet half-way to the shore, the boat shot suddenly out of the fervent sunshine into the cool dark shadow cast by the lofty mountains. Baptiste, feeling the rapid change, rested on his oars, and looked round towards the pile of barren hills. "Ugh, what a horrid place!" he cried. "I have a sensation as if I were passing into the mouth of a tomb. I should not like to explore that island alone." "Pull away!" said Carew impatiently. "Are you superstitious, like those two Spanish brutes?" "Superstition is not one of my failings, captain," replied the Provençal, as he rowed on again; "but those dreadful cries we heard last night seem to be still ringing in my ears. I wonder what they could have been?" "When you have put me on shore," said Carew, paying no heed to Baptiste's words, "you can go back to the barque. I shall probably remain on the island three or four hours. Then I will return to the landing-place, and stand on the end of it till you come off for me. So see that someone looks out for me with a telescope occasionally." "We won't keep you waiting, for I know that you will soon have had enough of Trinidad. But perhaps monsieur has a scientific mind, and desires to study the botany, zoology, geology, and so forth, of the island?" Carew made no reply to this. They came alongside the promontory of black coral, and found that the sea was not rolling in so heavily as on the previous day. The Englishman landed without any difficulty. "Good-bye, sir," Baptiste called out. "You will find the prisoners behind the first big boulder up the ravine." Then he pulled lazily back to the vessel. Carew was now alone on the desert island with his captives. He looked to his knife and pistol to see that they were ready to his hand, and proceeded to clamber cautiously along the narrow, slippery ledge.