The men of the Mirabelle then went on with their various tasks, but Amos went up to the Captain's bridge where he listened to Mr. Finney and Captain Blizzard, and Chris went down to their cabin for an hour or more.
Supposedly, Chris was studying lessons. This was only partially true, for instead of sums, he was practising magic, in which he soon attained a high degree of proficiency.
What he most enjoyed was turning himself into some small commonplace creature to plague his friends on board—a mouse, one day, a flea the next, a fly on the third. Quite naturally, no one suspected his ability to adopt such fantastic disguises. So little did they guess—he had one or two narrow escapes from being swatted or stamped on.
It was Zachary Heigh whom Chris wanted to watch, and as a flea or a fly he often rode about on Zachary's jacket listening and observing. But it was not until the Mirabelle had rounded Cape Horn one morning that Chris, in the disguise of a fly, rode unnoticed on Zachary's jacket when that sulky young man, after looking around to make sure the others were all at work, slipped down to the sailor's quarters below decks.
There he dragged out his sea chest, and from under his belongings pulled out a second chest. Fitting a key to the lock, he lifted up the lid. Chris, perched on his shoulder, peered over to see the contents. They were disappointing—merely a gray powder carefully packed in a piece of tarpaulin.
Wonder why it has to be kept so dry? Chris pondered, but Zachary was already refolding the tarpaulin and locking the lid. In the next moment, Zachary had uncovered a length of white coils. Then Chris understood.
By golly! he exclaimed to himself, dynamite! Or gunpowder! And so much! What's it for?
Zachary made no other disclosures of interest that day, but after that Chris spent all the time he could, both day and night, watching the young sailor. He was determined to discover if he could what Zachary intended to do with the gunpowder.
It was hard for Chris not to be able to ask Mr. Wicker's advice and not to have his master's superior knowledge to lean on. Yet had he known it, it was just this lack which was making him quick witted and more resourceful.
One night a short time after Zachary's uncovering of the gunpowder, Chris noticed that Zachary remained on deck after the others had gone to bed, and continued to sit with his back to a stanchion dreamily gazing at the starry sky. Chris was in a fever for Amos to sleep, which his good friend soon did. Then a gray mouse scuttered along the wainscot of the ship's passageways until it reached a good vantage point from which to see the young sailor on deck. Chris had chosen well; a mouse is used to the dark.