He backed away a little, his eyes on Warren, "Barnacle," said Captain Valvick violently, "dere iss no yoke. Ay tell you he iss right! Ay saw her — ay have my fingers on her head. Ay carry her in here. She wass—" Words failed him. He strode over, seized the pillow out of the berth and shook it. He peered under the berth, and then into the one above. "Coroosh! You don't t'ink we are in de wrong place, do you?"
Peggy, who had been stretching her arms out of War- | ren's loose blue coat to push the hair from her eyes, seized i the captain's arm.]
"It's true, Captain. Oh, can't you see it's true? Do you think we could have been mistaken about a thing like that? There's my compact, see? I left it on the couch. She was here. I saw her. I touched her. Maybe she just woke up and left. She had on a yellow crepe de chine frock, a dark green coat with—"
Captain Whistler inspected each one of them with his good eye and then shut it up. Then he passed the back of' his hand across his forehead.
"I don't know what to make of you," he said. "So help! me Harry! I don't. Forty years I've been at sea, thirteen in sail and seventeen in steam, and I never saw the beat of it. Mr. Baldwin!"
"Sir!" answered the second officer, who had been standing outside the door with a blank expression on his face. "Yes, sir?"
"Mr. Baldwin, what do you make of all this?" "Well, sir," replied Mr. Baldwin doubtfully, "it's all these elephants and bears that bothers me, sir. Not knowing, can't say; but I'd got a bit of a notion we were tryin to round up a bleeding Zoo."
"I don't want to hear anything about elephants an bears, Mr. Baldwin. Will you shut up about elephants and bears? I asked you a plain question and want a plain answer. What do you think of this story about the woman?"
Mr. Baldwin hesitated. "Well, sir, they can't all be loonies, now, can they?"
"1 don't know," said the captain, inspecting them. "My God! I think I must be going mad, if they're not. I know nil of them — I don't think they're crooks — I know they wouldn't steal fifty thousand pounds' worth of emeralds. And yet look here." He reached over and touched the berth. "Nobody's lain on that, I'll swear, if there was the blood they say. Where's the towel they say they used, hey? Where's the blood they say was outside the door? The woman didn't change the linen on that bed and walk off with the towel, did she?"