Presently, when I had supposed that all hands saving the fellow in the boat were sleeping, I saw a figure slowly coming my way. I gathered by his posture, as I dimly discerned it, that he was staring among the bushes as he advanced. He slightly lurched as he stepped, and it was not until he was within twenty feet of me that I perceived he was the carpenter. I pillowed my head on my arm, drew my feet up, and feigned to be in a sound slumber. He arrived abreast of me, stood looking a little, and then went slowly back to the others. The scheme I had made up my mind to adventure was one of extraordinary peril. Yet I was quite certain that the dreadful risk would provide me with my last, indeed my only chance. I was now immovably convinced that though Captain Braine’s story of the existence of the island was a fact, his assurance of a large fortune in hidden gold was a madman’s fancy. The men would be finding this out; what they would then do, I could not conjecture; but the menace involved in their lawlessness, their rage of disappointment, their determination (certain to follow) to find their account in the barque and her cargo at all costs, was so heavy, so fraught with deadly peril to Miss Temple and myself, that I was resolved that night to make one prodigious dash for liberty, leaving the rest to fate. Once during that day it had occurred to me to make a rush for the boat and shove off, leaving the men without any means of pursuing me; but a little consideration showed me that the risks of such an attempt were all too fearfully against me. If I valued my life for my own as well as for the girl’s sake, I must not fail; and yet failure seemed almost certain. Before I could have liberated the line that secured the boat, sprung into her, lifted one of her heavy oars to shove her off with, the men, who had always been working within a hundred and fifty yards of the beach, would have been upon me. Or supposing I had managed to slide the boat a few fathoms away before they arrived, half of them would have been probably able to swim faster than I could scull the clumsy fabric, whilst my erect figure must have supplied an easy mark for the stones which those remaining on shore would have hurled at me. No! I had mused upon and then utterly dismissed that scheme, coming back to my first resolution, which I now lay waiting for the right moment to execute.