She looked up quickly, with that pert little cocking of her head that I had always loved.
"Worthy of my love and respect, do you mean?"
I bowed. "Yes; that is what I mean."
"And you want me to marry him?" It was a dreadful thing for her to ask at such a time and in such a place, with the others almost within arm's-reach. But they were all talking at once, and nobody was paying much attention to anybody else.
"You are promised," I reminded her; "and if you can forgive him for chasing around after another woman——"
"Hush!" she commanded, with a sudden retreat into the arms of discreetness. "They will hear you and say things about you—behind your back. What are we to do now—just lie down and go calmly to sleep, forgetting all about these horrid pirates at the other end of our island? I can't quite see us doing that. Can you?"
It was just here that Bonteck cut in, saving me the necessity of answering.
"When you are quite through making Dick jump the hurdles for you," he said to Conetta; and then he explained. We were not to take the mutineers wholly at their word regarding the implied promise not to molest us. The six of us who had been on the firing front were to do picket duty while the others tried to get a little sleep. The professor and Billy were to take the north beach, Jerry Dupuyster and Grey the south, and Bonteck and I were to vibrate between the two beaches, keeping in touch with the shoreward couples on either hand, thus maintaining a guard line all across the island.
It was not until after this rather elaborate picketing plan had been put in train, and Van Dyck and I were cautiously feeling our way toward the agreed-upon frontier half-way down the island, that I ventured to find fault.
"I don't know why you should make six of us unhappy when one or two would be enough," I complained. "You know well enough that our fat cook is asking nothing but to be let alone until he can make off with the loot. He's not going to trouble us any more."