"I'm sorry to say he is, Miss Sheldon. Oh, have no fear—" he interjected, seeing the pain in her eyes—"he would never have been permitted to carry you from here, Miss. You have been in good keeping, before and since you left the Mission. There was a reason for letting Leyden go so far; a reason which I must withhold still. But there is a definite limit set to his progress, which I hoped would be reached to-day. Now, unfortunately, he has escaped me for the moment; but have no doubts, you, Captain Barry and Mr. Little, that at the proper time you will be let in on what seems no doubt a mystery just now."
"Mystery's right," retorted Little. "You know, Vandersee, I have always looked upon you as a sort of Admirable Crichton among sailors. Yet you let me make that awful mess back at the river entrance, letting go the anchors by meddling with the gears you had showed me. Now here you crop up, when I am half eaten, and tell me when the proper time comes I'll know all! It's like a yellow-backed novel."
Vandersee smiled broadly. He admired the cheery ex-salesman. He rose to his feet, carefully dusting off his knees, and replied:
"That accident with the anchors was nothing but chance, Mr. Little. If I smiled, it was simply because there was an element of humor in your amazement at the result of your meddling. I assure you that was all."
"Then why not push right after Leyden now and get the thing settled one way or the other?" blurted Barry. "All this stuff about opium smuggling doesn't concern us much. We came here on a definite errand for Cornelius Houten, and it seems that's a flivver. What's to hinder Little and myself clearing out from here? Your affair with Leyden isn't our affair, is it?"
"Oh, Cap'n, I forgot to tell you the Barang's sunk," put in Jerry Rolfe, who had approached and had been listening. "It clean slipped my mind, in the excitement."
"Barang's sunk?" echoed Barry and Vandersee together. And queerly enough, Vandersee evinced the greater alarm.
"Sure. She was scuttled by some water rats, and her lines cut. I just managed to get her down river and across the channel, so as to block up the Padang; then she settled in the mud."
"Thank Heaven!" burst from Vandersee, and his round face, which had gone dead white, became normal in color again. Barry and Little stared at him in amazement, but his smile told them nothing.
"I'm thankful even that your ship is sunk, Captain, since it is sunk as a barrier to the Padang," he said, and left them still in a fog. "But I am forgetting, and you, Miss Sheldon, are permitting me to forget, that our friends here need more comfort than we can give them in the jungle."