Blodgett snorted angrily, but the others laughed at Bill--silly old butt of the forecastle, daft about his little girl!--and after speculating at length concerning the treasure that Blodgett had described so vaguely, fell at last into a hot argument about how far a skipper could disobey the orders of his owners without committing piracy. Thus began the rumor that revealed the scatterwitted convictions so characteristic of the strange, cat-like Blodgett, which later were to lead almost to death certain simple members of the crew; which served, by a freak of chance, to involve poor Bill Hayden in an affair that came to a tragic end; and which, by a whim of fortune almost as remote, though happier, placed me in closer touch with Roger Hamlin than I had been since the Island Princess sailed from Salem harbor. An hour later I saw the cook standing silently by his galley. He gave me neither look nor word, although he must have known that I was watching him, but only puffed at his rank old pipe and stared at the stars and the hills. I wondered if the jungle growth reminded him of his own African tropics; if behind his grim, seamed face an unsuspected sense of poetry lurked, a sort of half-beast, half-human imagination. Never glancing at me, never indicating by so much as a quiver of his black features that he had perceived my presence, he sighed deeply, walked to the rail and knocked the dead ashes from his pipe into the water. He then turned and went into the galley and barricaded himself against intruders, there to stay until, some time in the night, he should seek his berth in the steerage for the few hours of deep sleep that were all his great body required. But as he passed me I heard him murmuring to himself, "Dat Bill Hayden, he betteh look out, yass, sah. He say Mistah Captain Falk don't want to go to spoil his good name. Dat Hay den he betteh look out." With a bang of his plank door the old darky shut himself away from all of us in the darkness of his little kingdom of pots and pans. [Illustration] III WHICH APPROACHES A CRISIS [Illustration] CHAPTER XI A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS IN GOLD Unquestionably the negro had known that I was there. Never otherwise could he have ignored me so completely. I was certain too, that his cryptic remarks about Bill Hayden were intended for my ears, for he never acted without a reason, obscure, perhaps, and far-fetched, but always, according to his own queer notions, sufficient. Sometimes it seemed as if he despised me; sometimes, as if he were concealing a warm, friendly regard for me. An hour later, hearing the murmer of low voices, I discovered a little group of men by the mainmast; and moved by the curiosity that more than once had led me where I had no business to go, I silently approached. "Ah," said one of the men, "so you're keeping a weather eye out for my good name, are you?" It was Captain Falk.