"You don't seem to be letting your wonderment disturb you very much." I was still warm, both over the bootless little tussle with Lequat, and because Van Dyck had so ignominiously failed to rise to the occasion—and was still continuing to fail.
"What's the use?" he queried. "We are like the harmless and inoffensive citizen who wakes up in the middle of the night to find a burglar's spot-light shining in his eyes and the burglar's gun shoved in his face. Discretion is always the better part of valor. Haven't you learned that invaluable lesson, knocking about in this harsh old world? But getting back to things present and pressing—there goes our anchor."
The brief roar of the cable running through its hawse-hole told us that the Andromeda was in comparatively shallow soundings. We could feel the snub of the anchor as the yacht's way was checked, and a little later the sounds overhead advertised the fact that the mutineers were lowering one of the boats.
Beyond the slap of the lowered boat as it took the water, the noises were less easily definable. There were bumpings and bangings which seemed to come from forward of the bridge, muffled sounds like those of a busy baggage-room at train-time, the shrilling of blocks and tackle, and a skirling chatter suggestive of a steam winch in action. Following these we could hear the low humming of the motor in the dropped electric launch; a murmur which gradually died away as we listened.
Somewhat farther along, after the buzzing motor murmur had come and gone often enough to tell us that the launch was plying industriously between the yacht and some other destination, Van Dyck said: "You'd say they were taking an entire cargo ashore, wouldn't you?—provided the Andromeda carried any cargo." Then: "I've cornered a guess, Dick—which you may have for what it is worth. I believe these fellows are meaning to take a leaf out of the book of the old buccaneers of the Spanish Main and maroon us."
"What makes you think that?" I demanded.
"Putting two and two together. That is the hoist winch making all the clatter up forward. They are unloading the forehold—of our dunnage and some part of the provisions, we'll say—and lightering the stuff ashore in the launch. Assuming that they expect to find a quarter of a million dollars hidden away somewhere in the Andromeda, they'll figure that they need to get rid of us, and run fast and far to make their get-away, won't they?"
"That sounds sufficiently barbarous to fit in with the rest of it," I fumed.
"Right-o. That being the case, they have only to stow us away in some safe place—where we won't be found and rescued too soon—and then up stick and away; put steam to the yacht and vanish. Once they get going, they'll be safe enough. The Andromeda will outrun anything of her inches, short of the torpedo chasers and the hydroplanes, when she is pushed to it. What do you say?"
"I'm not saying anything," I returned crustily. "I'm too busy wondering what in Heaven's name has thinned your blood to the milk-and-water consistency, Bonteck. I've heard a few queer things about you during the past three years, but I wasn't told that you had gone completely dippy. Why, man alive! if your guess is right, you stand to lose a cool half-million in the value of the yacht—to say nothing of what may happen to the bunch of us if we are marooned on some lonesome island in the southern Caribbean!"