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Wabi and Mukoki had just come through the door after bearing out one of their gruesome loads, and the young Indian hurried to his side. He weighed one of the pieces in the palm of his hand. "It's lead, or " "Gold!" breathed Rod. He could hear his own heart thumping as Wabi jumped back to the light of the door, his sheath-knife in his hand.
This he seized and levelled at Stephens, pulling the trigger, after careful aim. The rusty weapon missed fire, and the intrepid half-breed began hastily to chip the flint with the back of his sheath-knife; but while he was engaged in this laudable preparation, Annette came over the earthworks like a bird, smote him with the handle of her whip upon the crown, and sent him sprawling in the dust.
He jerked his belt tight about him and felt the sheath-knife which it carried pressing against his back. He reached back and slid it round to his right side, where his hand would drop on it easily; it might chance that before the night was over he would need a weapon. He had no notion of the hour nor of the length of time he had been in the water.
In half an hour the drift had increased to such an extent that we could no longer turn over, and our supply of air was almost entirely cut off. We must either get out or be suffocated. I had drawn my sheath-knife fifteen minutes before in expectation of such a crisis, and as it was already becoming difficult to breathe, I cut a long slit in the canvas above my head and we crawled out.
The breed grunted unintelligibly, and was about to leave when Boyd reached forth suddenly and plucked the fellow's sheath-knife from its scabbard. With a startled cry, Constantine whirled, his face convulsed, his nostrils dilated like those of a frightened horse; but Emerson merely fingered the weapon carelessly, remarking: "That is a curious knife you have. I have noticed it several times."
My sheath-knife never cut into better sea-beef than that which we found lying in the kid in the forecastle. The bread, too, was hard, dry, and brittle as glass; and there was plenty of both. While we were below, the mate of the vessel called out for someone to come on deck. I liked his voice. Hearing it was as good as a look at his face. It betokened a true sailor, and no taskmaster.
Stevenson on her arrival, and the poor lady's surprise and consternation were increased by the appearance of the good-hearted Paul while waiting on table a plump little German with a bald head, clothed in a flannel shirt open at the neck, a pair of ragged trousers, particularly dilapidated in the seat and held up by a leather strap round the waist, a sheath-knife stuck in the belt, barefoot, and most likely offering the information that "the meat is tough, by God."
He hauled together several fallen trees, laid them in a row and bound them at one end with his pack strap and at the other with a piece of our old trolling line. When this was done, he hacked himself a pole with his sheath-knife, threw his bag containing a piece of a porcupine and some grouse on the raft, launched it, jumped on it himself and pushed out into the stream.
He carried nothing in the shape of weapons, not even the usual leather belt and sheath-knife. And in this he was apart from the method of his country, where the use of firearms was the practice in disputes. On his part, Jake looked upon a well-built man five inches his inferior in stature, but a man of good proportions, with a pair of shoulders that suggested possibilities.
They could speak a little Spanish and French, and got on with them. But Jim and I could only stare and stand open-mouthed when a Spanish-American chap would come up with his red sash and his big sheath-knife, while they'd yabber away quite comfortable.
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