"I see," commented Owen to help him out. "You sort of slipped on a sex-appeal, so to speak."
"Yes," said the sailor, gratefully. "It was just like that."
"It's a lie," said a high, thin voice from somewhere, and they noticed that a porthole behind them was open.
Pauline found conversation difficult. Hicks, as a man of few words, which gave him an undeserved reputation for wisdom. The "pirate" had given up spinning yams on account of the old man's unfailing interruption. Owen's mind, too, was preoccupied with a growing suspicion. So the adventurous young lady went to her stateroom and wrote a letter to Harry.
The sailor intimated that he had important news which could be only told in the privacy of Owen's stateroom. The secretary suspected this to be only a maneuver on the "pirate's" part to get acquainted with the whiskey he knew Owen kept with him. But the seafarer unfolded the tale of his black eye not truthfully nor accurately, except in that he had recognized Harry under the disguise of the old man.
"I more than half suspected it," said Owen, "and I have been watching his stateroom. But there is no way any one can see into his room unless by getting a look in through the porthole."
"And there's where you get a good idea," said the "pirate."
"But there's no good having a peep' at him without his disguise now that it's Harry," objected Hicks.
"No," said the "pirate," turning on Owen his lusterless sea-green eyes, faded by much grog to a dimness that reminded one of the faint lights set in ships' decks and known as "dead-eyes." "No, but your porthole idea is just the scheme to get at him and get rid of him. I can slip down a rope tonight when all is quiet and the fool passengers are over on the other side looking at the bloody moon."
"And then what?" said Owen.