As we cast off, we six in that little boat soon to be left alone in the wastes of the China Sea, we looked up at the cold, laughing faces on which the low sun shone with an orange-yellow light, and saw in them neither pity nor mercy. The hands resting on the bulwark, the hands of our own shipmates, were turned against us. The ship was coming back to her course now, and some of us were looking at the distant island with the cone-shaped peaks, toward which by common consent we had turned our bow, when the cook, who still stared back at Kipping, seemed to get a new view of his features. Springing up suddenly, he yelled in a great voice that must have carried far across the sea:-- "You Kipping, Ah got you--Ah got you--Ah knows who you is--Ah knows who you is--you crimp's runner, you! You blood-money sucker, you! Ah seen you in Boston! Ah seen you befo' now! A-a-a-ah!--a-a-a-ah!" And he shook his great black fist at the mate. The smile on Kipping's face was swept away by a look of consternation. With a quick motion he raised his loaded pistol, which he had primed anew, and fired on us; then, snatching another from one of the crew, he fired again, and stood with the smoking weapons, one in each hand, and a snarl fixed on his face. Captain Falk was staring at the negro in wrath and amazement, and there was a stir on the deck that aroused my strong curiosity. But the cook was groaning so loudly that we could hear no word of what was said, so we bent to the oars with all our strength and rowed out of range toward the distant island. Kipping's second ball had grazed the negro's head and had left a deep furrow from which blood was running freely. But for the thickness of his skull I believe it would have killed him. Once again the sails of the Island Princess, as we watched her, filled with wind and she bore away across the sapphire blue of the sea with all her canvas spread, as beautiful a sight as I have ever seen. The changing lights in the sky painted the water with opalescent colors and tinted the sails gold and crimson and purple, and by and by, when the sun had set and the stars had come out and the ocean had darkened, we still could make her out, smaller and ghostlike in the distance, sailing away before light winds with the money and goods all under her hatches. Laboring at the oars, we rowed on and on and on. Stars, by which we now held our course, grew bright overhead, and after a time we again saw dimly the shores of the island. We dared not stay at sea in a small open boat without food or water, and the island was our only refuge. Presently we heard breakers and saw once more the bluff headlands that we had seen from the deck of the Island Princess. Remembering that there had been low shores farther south, we rowed on and on, interminably and at last, faint and weary, felt the keel of the boat grate on a muddy beach. At all events we had come safely to land. CHAPTER XVIII ADVENTURES ASHORE