They were silent for a while, pondering over this new development and trying to discover where it might lead. Under sharp commands the crew brought the schooner about on the starboard tack, for the wind was on the bow, and set a staysail between the fore and main masts. The splendid ship seemed to skim over the surface of the sea, touching only the tops of the waves.
“No, it’s no good!” broke out Code suddenly. 231 “Much as I hate Nat Burns, I don’t believe he would come aboard my schooner just for the purpose of stealing a silver-plated mirror. That isn’t like him. He’s too clever to do anything like that. And, besides, what kind of a revenge would that be for having lost the race?”
“Well, what can you suggest? How else did he get it?” Elsa was frankly sceptical and clung to her own theory.
“He might have come aboard for something else, mightn’t he, and picked up the mirror just incidentally?”
“He might have, yes, but what else would bring him there?”
Code sat rigid for a few minutes. He had such a thought that he scarcely dared consider it himself.
“It’s all clear to me now,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “Nat came aboard to damage the schooner so that he would be sure to win the second race.”
“Code!” The cry was one of involuntary horror as Elsa remembered the tragedy of the May. Hate Nate though she might, this was an awful charge to lay at his door.
“Then he killed his own father, if what you say is true!” she added breathlessly. “Oh, the poor wretch! The poor wretch!”
“Yes, that solves it,” went on Code, who had hardly heard her. “That solves the entries that 232 Michael Burns made in his ship’s log before he went to St. John on his last business trip. Nat swore he could not lose, and the old man, who was honest enough himself, must have wondered what his son was up to.