“My dear Miss Deane, that is not at all a Trades Unionist sentiment.  Equality is the key-note of their propaganda.”

Nevertheless he was manifestly pleased by the success of his ingenious contrivance, and forthwith completed the cordon.  To make doubly sure, he set another snare further within the trees.  He was certain the Dyaks would not pass along Turtle Beach if they could help it.  By this time the light was failing.

“That will suffice for the present,” he told the girl.  “Tomorrow we will place other sentries in position at strategic points.  Then we can sleep in the Castle with tolerable safety.”

By the meager light of the tiny lamp they labored sedulously at the rope-ladder until Iris’s eyes were closing with sheer weariness.  Neither of them had slept much during the preceding night, and they were both completely tired.

It was with a very weak little smile that the girl bade him “good night,” and they were soon wrapped in that sound slumber which comes only from health, hard work, and wholesome fare.

The first streaks of dawn were tipping the opposite crags with roseate tints when the sailor was suddenly aroused by what he believed to be a gunshot.  He could not be sure.  He was still collecting his scattered senses, straining eyes and ears intensely, when there came a second report.

Then he knew what had happened.  The sentries on the Smugglers’ Cove post were faithful to their trust.  The enemy was upon them.

At such a moment Jenks was not a man who prayed.  Indeed, he was prone to invoke the nether powers, a habit long since acquired by the British army, in Flanders, it is believed.

There was not a moment to be lost.  He rushed into Iris’s room, and gathered in his arms both her and the weird medley of garments that covered her.  He explained to the protesting girl, as he ran with her to the foot of the rock, that she must cling to his shoulders with unfaltering courage whilst he climbed to the ledge with the aid of the pole and the rope placed there the previous day.  It was a magnificent feat of strength that he essayed.  In calmer moments he would have shrunk from its performance, if only on the score of danger to the precious burden he carried.  Now there was no time for thought.  Up he went, hand over hand, clinging to the rough pole with the tenacity of a limpet, and taking a turn of the rope over his right wrist at each upward clutch.  At last, breathless but triumphant, he reached the ledge, and was able to gasp his instructions to Iris to crawl over his bent back and head until she was safely lodged on the broad platform of rock.

Then, before she could expostulate, he descended, this time for the rifles.  These he hastily slung to the rope, again swarmed up the pole, and drew the guns after him with infinite care.

Even in the whirl of the moment he noticed that Iris had managed to partially complete her costume.