"Why didn't you challenge?"
"Because there's been strange doings these twenty-four hours parst, and I knew your affairs might be taking a serious turn. I thought you'd be wanting to know their play, 'stead of scaring 'em off. So I peeped and listened. With my eyes getting fair used to the dark I made out a dinghy with four men, and think they'd bent a line about our rudder post, for the for'ard man seemed to be working at us silent and farst. The middle one had the oars, ready to pull away. In the stern sheets sat the one I guessed was boss and, kind of squatting down in front of him, was a lad. To tell the truth, sir, I felt squirmy, for those night-hawks were up to something mysterious."
"Wait a minute, Gates—did you recognize them?"
"Not me, sir. As I was saying, the fellow aft now parssed up a bundle to the for'ard chap, who took it gingerly and began farstening it on to us somewhere—I couldn't see. The young lad leaned over and looked at it, then he up and sings out: 'It ain't fair!'"
"Yes, yes," I caught him by the shoulders. "Go on, Gates!"
"Mind out this thing under my coat," he warned. "Well, sir, the one that was boss made a grab for him—Lor', how he did jerk him!—and the others froze like stone. They stayed that way while you were calling, then the dinghy glided off—the one aft still holding his hand over the lad's mouth and kind of choking him with the other."
My blood was fairly steaming, and I cried out what was uppermost in my mind:
"That wasn't a lad, Gates! It was a girl!"
His jaw dropped and he stared at me, but slowly shook his head.
"No, sir, it warn't a girl, or the fellow wouldn't have handled her so rough. Besides, sir, he wore—the lad, I mean—a jacket and cap like you or me."