One day, under the pretense of wanting medicine, Hyde Brazzier suddenly appeared at the cabin door. The mate and captain were, as usual, studying the chart, and while the mate was ransacking the medicine chest for the drug, that single eye of the sailor secured five minutes’ sharp scrutiny of the all-important map.
Redvignez and Brazzier were not much together, as a matter of course, for one was in the captain’s watch and the other in the mate’s, but during the long, pleasant days and nights when they were voyaging toward the South Seas, they obtained many opportunities for confidential talks. All this might have been in the natural order of things on board the schooner, where the discipline was not strict, but Abe Storms had become pretty well satisfied that harm was meant, and mischief was brewing. He saw it in the looks and manner of these two men, who, while they were watching others, did not suspect they were watched in turn.
About Pomp he was not so certain. The steward and cook seemed to be on good terms with the two sailors, and he frequently sat with them as they formed a little group forward, on the bright moonlight nights, when they preferred to sit thus and smoke 62 and spin yarns to going below and catching slumber, when it was their privilege to do so.
“I believe he is in with them,” was the conclusion which Storms, the mate, finally reached, after watching and listening as best he could for several days. “They’re hatching some conspiracy––most likely a mutiny to take possession of the ship. Captain Bergen doesn’t suspect it––he is so absorbed in the pearl business; and I’ll let him alone for the present, though it may be best to give him a hint or two to keep him on his guard.”
It never can be known what the restraining power of little Inez Hawthorne was on board that vessel on her extraordinary voyage to the Paumotu Islands, in the South Seas. She lived over again the same life that was hers during the few days spent on the Polynesia. She ran hither and thither, climbing into dangerous places at times, but with such grace and command of her limbs that she never once fell or even lost her balance. She chatted and laughed with Brazzier and Redvig, but she preferred the others, and showed it so plainly in her manner, that, unfortunately, the two could not avoid noticing it.
“See here,” said Captain Bergen, one evening while sitting in the cabin with the child on his knee, “I want you to try and think hard and answer me all the questions I ask you. Will you?”
“Of course I will, if you don’t ask too hard ones.”
“Well, I will be easy as I can. You have told me all about the big steamer that you were on when we found you, and you said that you lived with your Uncle Con in San Francisco, and that it was he and your Aunt Jemima that put you on board.”
“I didn’t say any such thing!” indignantly protested Inez. “I haven’t got any Aunt Jemima––it was my Aunt Letitia.”