Yet, before the hands of the clock were upon the hour of four, we knew what was to be done. It was wholly Helga's scheme. Her brain had planned it all; but it was not until she spoke and delivered her plot bit by bit that I understood the reason of her silence while I had been feverishly whispering my fears, talking of the Captain, of Nakier, of the treachery of the Malay and Cingalese miscreants, and asking, as one might think aloud, 'What is to be done?'

We went on deck at four; it was the darkest hour of the night, but very quiet. I bade Abraham and the other man go forward and turn in, as had heretofore been their custom.

'Not a word!' I cried, in swift response to the first of Jacob's remonstrance. 'I cannot speak here. There are thirsty ears at the wheel.

We have planned that long before this time to-morrow the barque shall be our own, with nothing more for you to do than to calculate the value of the salvage. I'll find an early chance to explain--but not here! not _now_! Forward with you both; for our lives depend upon the fellows believing that we have confidence in them.'

This I spoke as rapidly as intelligibility would permit, and, with Helga, drew away from them, moving towards the wheel. They hung as though staring and deliberating a few moments, then, without a word, went forward.

I spoke pleasantly to the fellow at the helm--what man it was I could not see--said that the vessel's course was the right navigation for the South African coast, and so forth. He answered me throatily, with a note of satisfaction in his thick speech, and then Helga and I fell to quietly pacing the deck.

We took great care to speak low; so nimble and ghostly were the movements of this coloured crew, that it was impossible to tell where a man might be lying listening and hidden. Twice I beheld the flitting of a shadow in the obscurity round about the mainmast, and all the while I walked I was again and again casting a look behind me.

It seemed an eternity ere the cold gray of the dawn hovered in the east.

The first sight the bleak and desolate light revealed was a patch of dark crimson abreast of the companion, close against the rail, marking the spot where the unhappy mate had been stabbed. The barque stole glimmering out to the daylight, lifting her ashen canvas with a gloom about the deck where the forecastle ended, as though the blackness of the night had been something tangible, and the lingering shadows betwixt the rails fragments and tatters of it. I swept the sea-line. The ocean was a gray desert floating in thin lines of swell which made it resemble a vast carpet stirred by a draught of wind. But the small breeze of the previous evening was still with us, and the broad bows of the vessel broke the water into wrinkles fine-drawn as piano-wire, as she swam forwards, slowly rolling.

Three of the crew sat squatting like Lascars against the long-boat. I called, and they instantly sprang to their feet and came aft.

'Get sc.r.a.pers,' said I, 'and work that stain out of the deck as fast as you can move your arms.'

They sprang forwards, returned with the necessary tools, and in a minute were on their knees sc.r.a.ping violently. With a dreadful feeling of sickness of heart I rejoined Helga at the other end of the deck.

The sun rose: the morning was to be a bright one; the heavens went, in a clear tropic blue, into the south and west, and in the north-east the clouds, like a scattering of frosted silver, hung high and motionless--mere pearly feathers or vapour, to be presently absorbed.

Helga went below, to her cabin under the deck. When I asked her if she did not feel timid at the idea of penetrating those gloomy depths alone, she smiled, and, merely saying, 'You have called me brave, but you do not believe me so!' she left me.

It was shortly after seven o'clock that I spied Nakier standing in the galley-door, talking to someone within. I called to him: he immediately knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and slipping the inch of sooty clay into his breast, approached me. His salute was full of respect, and he surveyed me with eyes so gentle and so cordial, that one looked to see the engaging tenderness of his heart overflowing his face in smiles. So much for appearances! The most poisonous-fanged rogue of them all in that barque, full of coloured wretches made miscreants and murderers of by Captain Joppa Bunting's theories of conversion, might have pa.s.sed to every eye as one of the very few sweet-souled men in this great world of wrong-headed humanity!

'Send Abraham to me,' said I, in the civilest manner I could command.

'It is his watch below, but I desire his presence and help while I overhaul the Captain's cabin for charts, for instruments of navigation, and so forth.'

He sought to veil, by drooping his lids, the keen glance he shot at me.

'Yaas, I send Misser Vise to you, sah,' said he; 'but first I would like to speakee about dat place we sail to. We have agree, and we ask you,'

he continued with a smile that put an expression of coaxing into his handsome face, 'to agree allee same with us to sail for Mossel Bay. It is a very good bay, and it have a nice little town.'

'Yes,' said I; 'and when we get there, what do you mean to do with the ship?'

'Oh, we allee go ash.o.r.e,' he answered.

He then asked me if I knew where Mossel Bay was. I answered that I had never heard of the place, but that if it was down on the charts we should undoubtedly be able to carry the barque to it. I then again requested him to send Abraham aft, that he and I and the young lady might examine the contents of the Captain's cabin, ascertain the situation of the ship when observations were last taken, and confer as to the course to be steered. I thought he hesitated for an instant, but, with true Malay swiftness of resolution that scarcely gave me time to note the hang of the mind in him, he exclaimed: 'I will send Misser Vise, sah,' and went forward.

In a few minutes Abraham arrived. He was speedily followed by Jacob, who hung about in the waist, looking wistfully aft. He, however, was to be talked to afterwards, for the policy of the three of us was to keep as separate as possible, coming together only under such excuse as I had now invented. The men who formed the watch on deck were 'loafing about,'

to use the expressive vulgarism, one lounging against the bulwark-rail with another talking to him; here a fellow squatting like a Hindoo blowing a cloud, there a couple patrolling ten feet of deck, their arms folded upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. There was no gesticulation, no excitement, nothing of the swift fierce whispered conversation significant with the flashing of the askant glance that had been noticeable down to the dusk of the previous evening. Nakier paced the weather-side of the forecastle. I never once caught him looking our way, yet I could _feel_ that the fellow had us in his eye as fully as though his stare was a level one.

'Abraham,' said I, 'I have sent for you under the pretence of helping me to overhaul the dead skipper's stock of nautical appliances. My real motive is to create an opportunity to acquaint you with the plot Miss Nielsen and I settled between us while we were in the cuddy. Don't look knowing, man! Put on as honest and stupid a Deal beach air as you can manufacture.'

I called to Nakier.

'The barque will want watching. Step aft and keep a look-out while we are below, will you?' and, followed by Abraham, I entered the cuddy.

CHAPTER VI.

HELGA'S PLOT.

Before summoning Helga, I resolved to take a peep at the berths, lest there should be some sight in one or the other of them too shocking for her to behold. I was made to think of this by the great bloodstain on the deck close against the cabin-door. Its true complexion showed in the daylight. Abraham again backed away on seeing it; but time was precious.

This was an opportunity to make the most of, and pushing open the door, I peered in. It was as I might have conjectured. The Captain had been a.s.sa.s.sinated by twenty strokes of the fellows' knives as he lay in his bunk asleep. Not one, not half a dozen stabs could have made such a horror of the bedclothes and the square of carpet on the deck as we gazed at. It was not an interior fit for Helga to enter.

I looked into the mate's berth, and found it as the man had left it--the blanket lying as it had been tossed when he arose. There was nothing frightful here; but our business lay in the Captain's cabin, and, full of loathing, I re-entered the horrible room and shut the door.

'A piteous sight! a piteous sight, sir!' exclaimed Abraham, looking about him in a stupefied way, and biting upon his under-lip to moisten it.

'Now attend!' said I. 'Collect your wits, for our stratagem signifies life or death to us.'

It took me but a few minutes to communicate Helga's plan. He grasped the thing with sailorly prompt.i.tude, nodding eagerly, with the blood returning to his cheeks to my hurried whispering; and when I had made an end and drew back to mark his judgment in his face, he struck his thigh a mighty blow, but said in a voice cold with resolution, despite his countenance being all awork with agitation:

'It will do, sir. It can't fail. It is only the getting 'em together; but it's to be done with a little patience.'

'Now,' said I, 'let us see what is here. Will the poor fellow have had a revolver?'

But we searched in vain for such a weapon. With hasty, desperate hands, never knowing but that at the next moment Nakier might enter, or some probing yellow face stare in upon us through the little window that overlooked the quarter-deck, we ransacked the lockers, explored a large black sea-chest, examined the shelves--to no purpose.

'He was too good a Christian man,' said Abraham hoa.r.s.ely, 'to own a pistol. Had he been a Nova Scotiaman there'd be veapons enough here to rig out a regiment of the line vith.'

'It cannot be helped,' said I, keenly disappointed nevertheless, for I had counted upon finding a revolver, scarcely doubting that a man in charge of such a ship's company as these coloured fellows formed would go to sea well armed.

With all haste possible we transferred to the mate's cabin a bag of charts, a couple of s.e.xtants, a chronometer, and other matters of a like sort, and then with sickened hearts closed the door upon that tragic interior of the Captain's berth. I looked through the contents of the bag, and found a large blue-backed chart of South Africa, with marginal ill.u.s.trations of the princ.i.p.al ports, harbours and headlands.

'This will do,' said I, and rolling it up, I put it under my arm, and, accompanied by Abraham, stepped through the cuddy door.

My eye once more as I pa.s.sed fell upon the dreadful stain ingrained in the plank of the deck, and observing Punmeamootty speaking with another man a little forward of the mainmast, I was about to call and order him to sc.r.a.pe out the odious shocking blotch. But at the same instant it crossed my mind to let it be: it was a detail to fit into our stratagem, and I whispered the fancy to Abraham as we quitted the cuddy. I believed that all this while Helga was below in her cabin, and I was leaning over the little hatch that led to our quarters to call to her, when she p.r.o.nounced my name from the deck overhead, and on looking up I saw her standing at the bra.s.s rail with Nakier.

'Shall Oi go forward an' get my breakfast or keep along with you, Mr.

Tregarthen?' said Abraham.

'Keep with me for a little time,' I answered, and he followed me on to the p.o.o.p.

Nakier's fine eyes glowed, and his face was lighted up with an expression of admiration and pleasure. It was manifest at the first glance that Helga had not spared her simple pretty arts in conversing with him.

Her first words to me were:

'Nakier has been talking to me about his native country. Oh, what a happy land of flowers and birds and a thousand other delights must it be!' She clasped her hands as though in rapture, and added: 'I shall hope some of these days to visit that shining country.'

'This is all very clever and happily devised, and well done,' thought I, stealing a peep at Nakier, who was steadfastly regarding with undissembled admiration the girl's sweet fresh face, that was faintly flushed by her enactment; 'but if we three men should be made away with----' I choked off the hurry of ugly fancies that swarmed on top of the thought of that dark princely-mannered villain falling in love with her, and exclaimed:

'Yes, the country of the Malays is a paradise, I believe! Here, Nakier, is a chart of South Africa.'