I held the flame down to Thirkle’s face, and his clenched teeth grinned at me through snarling, open lips, but his eyes were glazed with death.  We stripped him of his arms and lay him down in the palm-leaves, quite dead.

“Did that other rascal get away?” asked Riggs.  “We’ll have to wait a bit and see if we can’t find him.  But probably we better get to sea.  Ye know where ye left the plugs and oars?  That little red-headed chap can’t do much harm, and if he gets away we’ll find him some day.  We’ll be back here in the shake of a lamb’s tail, anyhow.”

We rigged the tackle and hauled the boat into the sand with little trouble, and, while Rajah held her on an even keel, we tugged at the painter and soon had the water lapping at her bows.  The stock of provisions and water was restowed, and then we smashed the extra boat and took the oars.  We covered Thirkle with sand, but Riggs said he would carry him back to Manila with the gold.

Rajah was in the boat, and we were prying it off the shingle and waiting for a favouring wave when we were startled with a hail from the jungle.

“Cap’n Riggs!  Oh, Cap’n Riggs!”

“Who’s there?” I shouted, although I knew.

“Petrak—­don’t leave me here, cap’n!  Take me away from this cussed place—­please, sir, please.  I’ll be good, only don’t leave me on the beach—­I’ll die afore mornin’, sir.”

We took him.  He came creeping out of the jungle, sniffling and wailing, and begging not to be hanged, and saying Thirkle and the others had done it all.  We bundled him into the bows, telling him he was a dead man if he made a suspicious move; but the little cur never had enough courage to fight unless he could stab a man in the back.

Once in the channel we filled away to the south, scooting past the black upper-works of the Kut Sang, as we caught a stiff breeze from the north.  Then Captain Riggs made me sleep.

It was long after daylight when the captain shook me, and right over us was a square-rigged ship.  She was hanging in stays, and a boat was coming to us from her when I looked over the gunwale.  She was an oil-carrier from Kobe to Manila.

“Four men out of the Kut Sang, ashore on a reef,” said Captain Riggs, as we went over her side.  “You may put the red-headed gentleman in irons, if you please, sir.  Thank you.”

And so we went back to Manila, where Petrak was hanged, and the only men who ever sailed with the Devil’s Admiral and lived to tell of it were Captain Riggs, and Rajah, and myself, and the story was not written until after Captain Riggs had fallen asleep under the poplars of his Maine home and forgot to awaken.  As I write the last of the tale, the wind howls in the chimney, and the fleecy fog is coming over Russian Hill from the Pacific, and hiding the ships in San Francisco Bay, and the last sheets from my pen are gathered up by Rajah, wearing in his girdle the kris that killed Thirkle.