INCLUDING A CROSS-EXAMINATION
Falk tried, I was certain, to conceal a smile of joy at Roger's simplicity,
and I saw that others in the boat were averting their faces. Also I saw
that they were shifting their weapons to have them more readily available.
Our own men, on the contrary, were remonstrating audibly, and to my lasting
shame I joined them.
A queer expression appeared on Roger's face and he looked at us as if
incredulous. I suddenly perceived that our rebellious attitude hurt him
bitterly. He had led us so bravely through all our recent difficulties! And
now, when success seemed assured, we manifested in return doubt and
disloyalty! I literally hung my head. The others were abashed and silent,
but I knew that my own defection was more contemptible by far than theirs,
and had Roger reproached me sharply, I might have felt better for it.
Instead, he spoke without haste or anger in a voice pitched so low that
Falk could not possibly overhear him.
"We simply _have_ to hold together, men. All to the gangway, now, and stand
by for orders."
That was all he said, but it was enough. Thoroughly ashamed of ourselves,
we followed him to the gangway whither the boat was coming slowly.
Roger assumed an air of neutral welcome as he reached for the bow of the
pinnace; but to us behind him he whispered sharply, "Stand ready, all
hands, with muskets and pikes."
"Now, then, Captain Falk," he cried, "hand over the money first. We'll stow
it safe on board."
"Come, come," Falk replied. "Belay that talk." He was
standing ready to climb on deck.
"The money first," said Roger coolly.
Suddenly he tried to hook the bow of the pinnace, but missed it as the
pinnace dipped in the trough.
The rest of us, waiting breathlessly, for the first time comprehended
Roger's strategy.
Falk looked up at him angrily. "That'll get you nowhere," he retorted.
"Come, stand away, or so help me, I'll see you hanged anyhow."
Roger smiled at him coldly. "The word of a gentleman? The money first,
Captain Falk."
"Well, if you are so stupid that you haven't discovered the truth yet, I
haven't the money."
"Where is the money?"
"In the safe in the cabin, as you very well know," replied Falk.
"You lie!" Roger responded.
With a ripping oath, Captain Falk whipped out his pistol.
"You lie!" Roger cried again, hotly. "Put down that pistol or I'll blow you
to hell. Stand by, boys. We'll show them!"
Though we were fewer than they, we had them at a tremendous disadvantage,
for we were protected by the bulwarks and could pour our musket-fire into
the open boat at will, and in a battle of cutlasses and pikes our advantage
would be even greater.
"Don't a flag of truce give us no protection?" Kipping asked in that
accursedly mild voice--I could not hear it without thinking of poor Bill
Hayden, and to the others, they told me later, it brought the same bitter
memory.
"How long since Cap'n Falk's ol' unde' shirt done be a p'tection?" muttered
the cook grimly.
"Yes, laugh! Laugh, you black baboon! Laugh, you silly little fool,
Lathrop!" Falk yelled. "I'll have you laughing another time one of these
days. Give way men! We'll have out their haslets yet."
A hundred feet from the ship, the men rested on their oars, and Falk put on
a very different manner. "Roger Hamlin," he cried, "you ain't going to send
us away, are you?"
I was astounded. As long as I had known Falk, I had never realized how many
different faces the man could assume at the shortest notice. But Roger
seemed not at all surprised. "Yes," he said, shortly, "we're going to send
you away, you black-hearted scoundrel."
"Good God! We'll perish!"
Although obvious retorts were many, Roger made no reply.
Now Kipping spoke up mildly and innocently:--
"What'll we do? We can't land--the Malays was waiting for us on shore with
knives, all ready to cut our throats. We can't go to sea like this. What'll
we do?"
"Supposing," cried old Blodgett, sarcastically, "supposing you row back to
Salem. It's only three thousand miles or more. You'll find it a pleasant
voyage, I'm sure, and you'd ought to run into enough Ladronesers and Malays
to make it interesting along the way."
"Ain't we human?" Kipping whined, as if trying to wring pity from even
Blodgett. "Ain't you going at least to give us a keg o' water and some
bread?"
"If you're not out of gunshot in five minutes," Roger cried, "I'll train
the long gun and blow you clean out of water."
Without more ado they rowed slowly away, growing smaller and smaller, until
at last they passed out of sight round the point.
"Ah me," sighed Neddie Benson, "I'm glad they're gone. It's funny Falk
ain't quite a light man nor yet a real dark man."
"_Gone_!" Davie repeated ominously. "_I_ wish they was gone." He looked up
at the furled sails. "They ain't--and neither is we."
"There's work to be done," said Roger, "and we must be about it. Leave the
nets as they are. Stack the muskets in the waist, pile the pikes handy by
the deckhouse, and all lay aft. We'd best have a few words together before
we begin."
A moment later, as I was busy with the pikes, Roger came to me and
murmured, "There's something wrong afoot. The after-hatch has been pried
off."
I noticed the hatch once more the next time I passed it, and I remembered
seeing the man from Boston emerge from the hold. But there was so much else
to be attended to that it was a long, long time before I thought of it
again.
When we had done as Roger told us, we gathered round him where he waited,
leaning against the cabin, with his hands in his pockets.
"We're all in the same boat together, men," he began. "We knew what the
chances were when we took them. If you wish to have it so, in the eyes of
the law we're pirates and mutineers, and since Falk seems to have got away
with what money there was on board, things may go hard with us. _But_--" he
spoke the word with stern emphasis--"_but_ we've acted for the best, and I
think there's no one here wants to try to square things up by putting Falk
in command again. How about it?"
"Square things up, is it?" cried Blodgett. "The dirty villain would have us
hanged at the nearest gallows for all his buttery words."
"Exactly!" Roger threw back his head. "And when we get to Salem, I can
promise you there's no man here but will be better off for doing as he's
done so far."
"But whar's all dat money gone?" the cook demanded unexpectedly.
"I don't know," said Roger.
"What! Ain' dat yeh money heah?"
"No."
At that moment my eye chanced to fall on the man from Boston, who was
looking off at the island as if he had no interest whatever in our
conversation. The circumstances under which he had stayed with us were so
strange and his present preoccupation was so carefully assumed, that I was
suddenly exceedingly suspicious of him, although when I came to examine the
matter closely, I could find no very definite grounds for it.
Blodgett was watching him, too, and I think that Roger followed our gaze
for suddenly he cried, "You there!" in a voice that brought the man from
Boston to his feet like the snap of a whip.
"Yes, sir! Yes, sir!" he replied briskly.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" Roger demanded. The fellow, who had
begun to assume as many airs and as much self-confidence as if he had been
one of our own party from the very first, was sadly disconcerted. "Why I
come over to your side first chance I had," he replied with an aggrieved
air.
"What were you doing in the cabin when the natives were running all over
the ship?"
The five of us, startled by the quick, sharp questions, looked keenly at
the man from Boston. But he, recovering his self-possession, replied coolly
enough, "I was just a-keeping watch so they wouldn't steal--I kept them
from running off with the quadrant."
"Keeping watch so _nobody'd_ steal, I suppose," said Roger.
"Yes, sir! Yes, sir! That's it exactly."
Suddenly my mind leaped back to the night when Bill Hayden had died, and
the man from Boston had made that cryptic remark, to which I called
attention long since. "He said he could tell something, Roger," I burst
out. But Roger silenced me with a glance.
Turning on the fellow again, he said, "If I find that you are lying to me,
I'll shoot you where you stand. What do you know about who killed Captain
Whidden?"
For once the fellow was taken completely off his guard. He glanced around
as if he wished to run away, but there was no escape. He saw only hostile
faces.
"What do you know about who killed Captain Whidden?"
"Mr. Kipping killed him," the fellow gasped, startled out of whatever
reticence he may have intended to maintain. "Yes, sir! Yes, sir!"
"Do you expect me to believe that Kipping shot the captain? If you lie to
me--" Roger drew his pistol. By eyes and voice he held the man in a
hypnosis of terror.
"He did! I swear he did. Don't shoot me, sir! I'm telling you the very
gospel truth. He cursed awful and said--don't point that pistol at me, sir!
I swear I'll tell the truth!--'Mr. Thomas is as good as done for,' he said.
'There's only one man between us and a hundred thousand dollars in gold.'
And Falk--Kipping was talking to Falk low-like and didn't know I was
anywhere about--and Falk says, 'No, that's too much.' Then he says,
wild-like, 'Shoot--go on and shoot.' Then Kipping laughs and says, 'So
you've got a little gumption, have you?' and he shot Captain Whidden and
killed him. Don't point that pistol at _me_, sir! I didn't do it."
Roger had managed the situation well. His sudden and entirely unexpected
attack had got from the man a story that a month of ordinary
cross-examinations might not have elicited; for although the fellow had
volunteered to tell all he knew, his manner convinced me that under other
circumstances he would have told no more than he had to. Also he had
admitted being in the cabin while the natives were roaming over the ship!