"Wouldn't let a man touch it, but had his own chinks from shore-side get it aboard with slings from the davits, and watched 'em stow it in the storeroom. It ain't in the hold. When I come across the key to the room I made up my mind I'd have a look at it. Tinned milk! Marked tinned milk! I say tinned milk hell! I wash my hands o' the whole cussed mess if ye don't look at it and see for yerself.
"I don't want the responsibility, and we've got to take some precaution. That's what the killin' was for, and I'll bet a clipper-ship to a doughnut-hole that writin' chap Trenhum knows about it, and he ain't no writin' chap, neither. Thar has been bad business, and there'll be more from what's below, mark my words. Come below and look at it."
"You looked it over in good shape with a light," said Captain Riggs, evidently in doubt as to what he should do. "It ought to be on the manifest, you know, Mr. Harris."
"Cuss the manifest! It's down as machinery and marked tinned milk. What more ye want? They got things switched somehow, and that's plain as the nose on yer face. I had my thumb on it, I tell ye."
"Then, if that is true, it explains why Mr. Trego was so mysterious, and why he wanted to be a passenger to the others. That's what he was aboard for, right enough, and like as not he would have told me if he had been left alive long enough. It don't strike me reasonable that he'd keep anything like that from me—not with the way things are going these days. The master of the vessel ought to know in a case like that, and a scraped-up crew." Riggs began to button his coat.
"Of course that was what he was so close-jawed for, and that's why the owners was so close-jawed. Like as not they didn't know—charter was for cargo, and they didn't bother their head about that part of it. Some sort of a sneak game about it, of course, but we've got to mind our P's and Q's now.
"The owners nor the charter party can't help us none with it now, say I, and as master ye're got to do as ye see fit. All this monkey-business to-night comes from it. I don't like the passengers and I don't like these new whites in the crew. They know one another, I'm tellin' ye. The long chap and Buckrow sailed with Petrak. They pretend they don't know one another—all bosh—thick as fleas when no one is a watchin' of 'em.
"See how Buckrow was so smart handin' over his knife to the red chap when he got in a jam? I say, where did we git them three jewels—the writin' chap brought the little red killer, and the parson brought the long fellow and Buckrow. Looks funny to me, cap'n—and we don't want no Devil's Admiral aboard of us."
"Mr. Harris!" exclaimed Captain Riggs getting to his feet, "you are not fool enough to believe stories about the Devil's Admiral, are you? That's all newspaper talk and water-front gossip."
"I ain't so doggone sure about that, cap'n—bein' gossip. Of course, I don't suspect nothin' like that aboard here, but from what Chips Akers told me before he died, after the loss of the Southern Cross, I'm not so sure this devil's-admiral talk is all folderol. Chips couldn't tell much before he went under, but the Southern Cross was boarded by the Devil's Admiral sure enough—didn't they find a sextant out of her in a store in Shanghai?