"Forewarned is forearmed," the Skipper said. "I'll not interfere further. You three, with Tom here, will take the matter into your own hands. One of you had best feign illness—serious illness I mean; and the other two can be put on duty night and day to watch him. Tom can be the sympathetic friend. We'll give it out that it's pneumonia or some other ailment which will account for two of the men—two friends that is—attending to him. After that you will make your own plans. Carry on, as they say in the army."
And "carry on" Bill and Jim and Larry did, with Tom's connivance.
"And you've give it out that it's pneumonia?" asked Larry in subdued tones that very evening, as Bill stood at the door of his cabin with a jug of milk in his hand, while Jim stood at the foot of his resting-place. "Every soul aboard knows as Larry, new hand—what we'd call a 'tenderfoot' way west—is down with a go of bronchitis and a cough what 'ud make his worst enemy sorry for him. Listen to it!"
The impertinent fellow coughed and coughed and coughed till Jim really felt anxious about him, while Bill, seeing the fun of the thing, laughed so heartily that the milk spilt from the jug, and Jim brought him up with an "about-turn".
"That's the sort of thing you'd do at the door of a sick-room?" he asked severely. "Here's Larry coughing his heart out, and you laughing in that heartless way. Put the milk down and go!"
If any one of the crew had been in the neighbourhood they would have seen the youthful Bill slinking away with his tail between his legs; for he recognized how injudicious his behaviour had been, though indeed Larry was to blame, since he was the cause of it. But a few hours' experience of this new plan caused all to settle down, and their hilarity to give place to essential seriousness. Indeed that night all realized that their quest meant much, not only to themselves and their shipmates, but to the British army, which was looking for the delivery of the goods which they were carrying.
However, they had yet to prove that their suspicions were well founded. It might, as Larry had said and repeated more than once with a sheepish grin, be "but a mare's nest", in which case all three friends, and the burly Tom in addition, felt—though they took care not to tell one another—that the position would be a little trying.
"You can take it from me," said Larry, when he had given up coughing violently, and he and Bill and Jim sat with their heads close together discussing the matter, "you can put it right like this: ef there's a chap aboard what's slinking about, he's either crazy or he's got something to slink for. What's a man want to slink about in the darkness for—eh?"
"Stealing," suggested Jim.