But she was at some pains, the next day, to talk to her brother only after Mermaid had had her scooter ride and had gone out to do errands at the store. “When he first spoke of ‘a man named King,’” Keturah explained to John Smiley, “I couldn’t make the connection. Then I remembered the entry about the flogging in Uncle John’s log of that passage. Aunt Keturah was with him on that voyage. The log only says that the mate refused to obey orders. I never heard Aunt Keturah utter a word of such a thing, but it’s perfectly possible; more than that, it’s likely. Mates, first mates, weren’t flogged before the crew for insubordination. There was something personal, I suspect. As for his--this fellow’s--having killed King, that’s neither here nor there with us. He said King had done us all the harm he ever would, but what harm did he ever do? Uncle John and Aunt Keturah lived to a peaceful old age and died comfortably in their beds--leastways, I suppose they were as comfortable as a person can be dying.” But the “Captain King” struck a full chord of memory in John Smiley’s breast. “Don’t you remember?” he cried. “That miserable devil we found on the beach after the wreck of the _Mermaid_, one of the crew? Remember I told you I sat up all night with him and that I made out from his delirious talking that a ‘Captain King’ had had the little girl, and had been sending her back to someone? He wanted to keep himself out of it and he wanted ‘forgiveness’--at any rate, that was one word in the letter we found in the pocket of the _Mermaid’s_ skipper.” He was deep in the painful process of recollection. “But still I can’t make head nor tail of it,” he confessed. “This man King may have hated John Hawkins and been willing to do anything he could to hurt him, he may have hated Aunt Keturah, but they’re dead and that’s an end of them! As for his harming us, he never could have had a chance. And as he’s dead he’ll never get one. And that’s an end of _him_! Captain Vanton says he killed him, and probably if he did it was a good job. He must have thought that King had bothered us somehow. Thoughtful of him to come and assure us that the dirty dog’s dead. I suppose,” he continued, reflectively, “I might go see him and talk with him. Perhaps he may have learned something from King that will set us on the track of Mermaid’s people. I’ll go!” Keturah was inclined to dissuade him.