Embarrassment quickly flung down a handful of obstacles in Charlotte's path, but she picked her way among them.
"I saw him yesterday morning quite close, and I looked at him because—because I thought I had seen him somewhere before. Do you know anything about him, Captain Mayfield?—who he is, I mean?"
"Not any more than I do about the rest of them. They're driftwood, mostly, you understand. We pick them up and drop them, here and there and everywhere. This fellow's name is Gavitt—John Wesley Gavitt—on the clerk's book. Mac said he was a sick hobo, working his way to St. Louis."
"How long before the beginning of a voyage do you hire the crew?" asked Charlotte, trying not to seem too pointedly interested.
"Oh, they string along all through the loading for two or three days, and from that right up to the last minute."
It was discouraging, and she was on the point of giving up. Her one hope now lay in the fixing of the exact time of the man Gavitt's enlistment in the Belle Julie's crew, and there appeared to be only one way of determining this.
"Does anybody know—could anybody tell just when this particular man was hired, Captain Mayfield?" she asked.
"Not unless Mac happens to remember. No, hold on; I recollect now; it was the day we left New Orleans—day before yesterday, that was."
"In the morning?"
If the good-natured captain was beginning to wonder why his pretty passenger was cross-examining him so closely, he did not betray it.