"Oh, no, of course not!"
"He came at me in my sleep," cried Bahama Bill. "He had something in a little white paper and he was trying to put it into my mouth when I woke up an' caught him. I think he was going to poison me!" And he leaped forward and caught the prisoner by the throat.
"Le—let up!" gasped the deck hand. "It—it's all a mis— mistake! I wasn't going to poi—poison anybody."
"Maybe he vos poison does sandwiches, doo," suggested Hans. "I mean dose dot made Bahama Pill sick."
"Like as not he did," growled the old tar. "He's a bad one, he is!"
And he shook the deck hand as a dog shakes a rat.
"He is surely in league with Sid Merrick," said Anderson Rover. He faced Wait Wingate sternly. "Do you dare deny it?"
At first Wingate did deny it, but when threatened with severe punishment unless he told the whole truth, he confessed.
"I used to know Sid Merrick years ago," he said. "He used me for a tool, he did. When we met at Nassau he told me what he wanted done and I agreed to do it, for some money he gave me and for more that he promised me."
"And what did you agree to do?" asked Anderson Rover.
"I agreed to get a job as a deck hand if I could and then, on the sly, cripple the yacht so she couldn't reach Treasure Isle as quick as the Josephine—the steamer Merrick is on. Then I also promised to make Bahama Bill sick if possible, so he couldn't go ashore and show you where the cave was. I wasn't going to poison him. The stuff I used was given to me by Merrick, who bought it at a drug store in Nausau. He said it would make Bahama Bill sleepy dopy, he called it."