"Well, by the"—wheezed the man, and stopped, cut speechless by wonder and rage. Then the hulking body lurched nearer.
"Look here!" cried Archer, jumping up and shaking his fist. He had lost his temper, as in a bad dream. "Be off with you! This is my beach as much as yours, if it comes to that. I 've lighted a fire, and I'm going to sit alone by it. Alone, do you hear? You 're only a squatter. Well, here I squat, too. You'd better go look after your son,—he's got himself into a pretty mess, and serve him good and right!"
He expected that on the heels of this they would be rolling down the pebbles in a clinch. Instead, the big man breathed hard with a startled puff, and asked anxiously:—
"Where? Where is he? What was it?"
"Oh, over there," said Archer wearily, pointing by guess toward the foot of the cliffs. "Been a fight—overboard—I don't know, go look for yourself."
The man reeled off into the dark. Archer was so tired that he merely felt relieved, as from a bore. He piled the fire till it blazed
