"Whose car was that?"
The driver turned and stared at the cloud of dust.
"I didn't rightly see, it might ha' been——" He stopped. "I'll tell you whar you can get a boat, Sah!" he suggested. "Mr. Cecil, he keeps one down at his place a bit down de road."
"Cecil!" Stuart had to control himself to keep from shouting the name. "Has he a place on this coast?"
"Yes, Sah; fine place, Sah, pretty place. Awful nice man, Mr. Cecil. He'll lend you de boat, for nuffin', likely. Brother Fliss, good man, you un'erstand, but he stick close to de money."
"Let's go there, just the same," said Stuart, "I don't want to be under obligations. I'd rather pay my way."
The negro shrugged his shoulders and, in a few minutes, the car stopped at the preacher's house.
As the driver had suggested, Brother Fliss "stick close to de money" and his charge was high. He was an intensely loyal British subject, and an even more loyal Jamaican, and when Stuart showed his card from the paper and at the same suggested that he needed this help in order to trace up a plot against Jamaica, the preacher was so willing that he would almost—but not quite—have lent the boat free.
Being afraid that the automobile driver might talk, if he returned to Spanish Town, and thus overset all the secrecy that Stuart flattered himself he had so far maintained, the boy suggested that the negro come along in the boat. This suggestion was at once accepted, for the mystery of the affair had greatly excited the Jamaican's curiosity.
The preacher, himself, received the suggestion with approval. Usually—for the craft, though, sturdy, was a small one—he was his own steersman and engineer. Now, he could enjoy the luxury of a crew, and the driver, who was a fairly good mechanic, was quite competent to handle the small two-cylinder engine.