"That doesn't mean anything. I tell you it was a girl—I'm sure of it!"
"Well, sir, you're wrong; for when they got out five fathom or so they stopped—to listen, maybe. You were back in the cockpit by then, and I guess the fellow must have let up on the young-un; for, all at once, he—the lad, I mean—raked a match along the gunnel, for to take a smoke, d'you see! My word, but the way he was grabbed this time would have shocked you. I couldn't see it, but you could hear the youngster gurgling. That shows it warn't a girl, sir!"
"What shows it? Because you think she wanted to smoke? Girls do, Gates!"
"They do that, sir, and I'm not gainsaying it; but they do it sociable, arfter dinner, setting 'round the cockpit, as you might say. It's seldom any of 'em has such a mortal craving for tobacco as to have to take a suck at a little cigarette every time a man chokes her by the throat. My word, no! It's the male sex that wants the weed under those conditions—not a girl, sir!"
But I was seeing an entirely different version of the affair, so far as the smoking went; and Gates would have seen it, too, if he hadn't been so excited. She had not wanted to smoke, at all, but to signal us! I knew it! I was never more sure of anything in all creation!
"And besides, sir," Gates now added, "no one would push his fingers into a girl's throat like——"
"Stop," I cried, for I could not listen to more of this. If ever I wanted to kill it was then. I wanted to get my own fingers on that scoundrel's throat as he had dared touch hers; and in my heart I swore by all the gods, by all the stars and moons and other things in the heavens and under the sea, that I would strangle out his miserable life by inches, or leave my bones to bleach on the shore of her unknown island. Wherever it was, I would find it; wherever she was, I would find her!—and God help him when he came my way! It was a classy oath, and I felt a lot better for it.
"Now, sir," Gates's voice began to tremble with passion as he held up a black thing that had been tucked under his coat, "this invention I took off our rudder post when I rowed 'round to see what they'd been up to. It's a dirty bomb, fixed to start us off for Davy Jones's Locker sometime tonight, sir!"
"You're sure it can't start us off now?" I asked, taking it from his hands.
"Not lest you get too familiar, sir. I've disconnected the clock part of it."