"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.