The Devil's Die; A Novel (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. For full two hours the Indian doctor sat, cross- legged, on the yacht's deck, under the awning of his improvised tent, closely watching the pinched faces of his two new and unknown patients. He sat there all the time with the true Bast Indian cat-like patience, fanning their faces alternately with his hands, and listening eagerly for the dip of oars upon the distant water. At last, a faint plash from beyond the second headland seemed to fall upon his quick senses. He stood up, put his open palm, shell- shaped, to his ear, and strained his hearing to its utmost pitch of absorbed attention. Yes, yes, it was the plash of oars, undoubtedly. Harry Chichele must be coming, at length, to aid and relieve him. The plash of oars grew nearer and nearer, and men's voices could be distinctly heard round the sharp corner of the granite headland.Presently, they turned the point of serpentine rock, and emerged, at last, into full view. There were two boats, one behind the other. In the first sat four stout Cornish fishermen. In the second, towed behind it by a rope, Harry Chichele was seated alone, in solemn silence. The boats drew up about two hundred yards from the yacht's moorings. Then the men leaned upon their oars, and threw off the rope with which they were towing Harry Chichele. Harry had a pair of light sculls in his own boat. With them he rowed himself hastily alongside, and Mohammad Ali, leaning over the gunwale, flung out a hawser, and hauled him on board. They made the small boat fast, in silence, to the stern. Then the four fishermen waved them adieu once more with their hands, and glided away in hot haste from the infected purlieus, leaving those two once more alone, and face to face with the deadly pestilence. Mohammad Ali's lip curled as before with inexp...