Wilfrid was slow in coming; I could see him through the skylight walking with Finn, gesticulating much, with a frequent look in the direction where, as I might gather, Master Muffin still hung. He kept Miss Laura and me waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour, during which I explained how Muffin had been discovered, how Wilfrid had gone on deck to arrange a punishment for him, and the like. Presently my cousin arrived, and on catching sight of Miss Jennings, cried out in his most boyish manner, ‘Only think, my dear, that our superstitious alarms last night should be owing to a trick, but a deuced clever trick, of that illiterate, yellow-faced, tearful, half-cracked son of a greengrocer--Muffin. I never could have believed he had it in him. Eh, Charles? Mad, of course; I don’t say dangerously so, but warped, you know, or is it likely that he would practise so cruel and dangerous a deceit merely because he wants to get home? Why, d’ye know, Charles, Finn gravely swears that, had the rascal persisted successfully for two or three nights, the yacht would have been in an uproar of mutiny, perhaps seized, ay, actually seized, through the terror of the crew, and sailed home--ending all my hopes.’ ‘How is he to be served?’ ‘Finn proposes,’ he answered, ‘that the men should form a court--a judge and jury. Their decision will be brought aft for our approval. If the sentence be a reasonable one, the fellows will be allowed to execute it.’ Miss Jennings looked scared. ‘They won’t hurt him much,’ said I. ‘Finn has pledged his word to me. ’Tis the fright that will do him good. Is he out of the rigging, Wilf?’ ‘Probably by this time,’ he answered. ‘I told Finn to get him sent down and fed. The sun is hot up there, and the poor devil faced it.’ Whilst we breakfasted I had much to say about the fellow’s singular accomplishment as a ventriloquist; suggested that by-and-by he should be brought aft to entertain us, and expressed wonder that a man so gifted, qualified by nature, moreover, to dress up his singular and special faculty with the airs of as theatrical a countenance as ever I had heard of, should be satisfied with the mean offices of a valet. But my flow of speech was presently checked by a change of mood in Wilfrid. His face darkened; he pushed his plate from him, and let fly at Muffin in language which would not have been wanting in profanity probably had Miss Jennings been absent. ‘Do you remember those strange warnings that I received about my little one?’ he cried, turning a wild eye upon me. ‘After the gross deception of last night, who’s to tell me that I might not have been made a fool of in that too?’ I shot a hurried glance of meaning and warning at Miss Jennings, and said carelessly, ‘Depend upon it, we can never be the victims of more than our senses in this life.’ ‘Why should the creature have left me to go forward?’ he shouted.