"You what?" "I come over--to your side, sir." "How about it, Ben?" "Why, so he says. We were having a pretty hard wrestling match, but he says it was to cover up his escape from the other party." "How was I to get away, sir, if I didn't have a subterfoog," the prisoner interposed eagerly. "I _had_ to wrastle. If I hadn't have, they'd 'a' shot me down as sure as duff on Sunday." For my own part I was not yet convinced of his good faith. He had gripped my throat quite too vindictively. To this very day, when I close my eyes I can feel his hard fingers clenched about my windpipe and his knees forcing my arms down on the bloody deck. He had let me go, too, only when we both knew that Captain Falk and his men had put off from the ship. It seemed very much as if he were trying to make the best of a bad bargain. But if, on the other hand, he was entirely sincere in his protestations, it might well be true that he did not dare come over openly to our side. The problem had so many faces that it fairly made me dizzy, so I abandoned it and tore open my clothes to examine the flesh wound on my shoulder. "Ay," I thought, when I saw where the musket-ball had cut me at close range, "that was a friendly shot, was it not?" Roger himself was not yet willing to let the matter fall so readily. His sharp questions stirred the man from Boston to one uneasy denial after another. "But I tell you, sir, I come over as quick as I could." Again Roger spoke caustically. "But I tell you, sir, I did. And what's more, I can tell you a lot of things you'd like to know. Perhaps you'd like to know--" He stopped short. Roger regarded him as if in doubt, but presently he said in a low voice, "All right! Say nothing of this to the others. I'll see you later." Captain Falk and his crew, meanwhile, had moved away almost unmolested. Their pikes and guns had held off the few natives who made a show of pursuing them, and the great majority of our allies were running riot on the ship, which was a sad sight when we turned to take account of the situation. Three natives were killed and two were wounded, not to mention my injured shoulder among our own casualties; and two members of the other party in the crew were sprawled in grotesque attitudes on the deck. Counting the one who was hit by a spear and who had fallen out of the boat, it meant that Falk had lost three dead, and if blood on the deck was any sign, others must have been badly slashed. In other words, our party was, numerically, almost the equal of his. Considering the man from Boston as on our side, we were seven to their eight. The lantern that we now lighted revealed more of the gruesome spectacle, and it made me feel sick to see that both the man from Boston and I were covered from head to foot with the gore in which we had been rolling; but to the natives the sight was a stupendous triumph; and the cook, when I next saw him, was walking down the deck, looking at the face of one dead man after another.