"He's not out of his bunk yet, I believe," replied the skipper; "but if you will follow me below I'll soon ascertain."
We accompanied him, as directed, along the deck and down the companion ladder. Entering the small cuddy he informed Mr. McGuire that two gentlemen desired to speak to him, and then shrugged his shoulders, and made his way up on deck again. He could barely have reached it before a man, clad in a suit of filthy pyjamas, and with his hair standing nearly on end, and his eyes almost out of his head, emerged from the cabin opposite which we were sitting and confronted us. I saw him start back against the bulwarks and throw up his hands as if to shut out the memory of our faces, and almost at the same moment I heard my companion utter a little cry, followed by the words, "My God, what's this?" Then McGuire, or Colway-Brown, by which name we knew him better, clutched at the panelling, missed it, and gradually slid down until he fell in a heap upon the deck. The recognition had been too much for him, and he had fainted.
When he recovered his senses, we lifted him up and placed him on a locker beside the table. A more miserable figure could scarcely have been found in all the Southern Seas. Again and again he looked at Leversidge, and every time he looked he groaned. I was more puzzled than I could express. The old gentleman's face alone was worth walking a long way to see. At last he got his breath, and was able to use his voice.
"You miserable, cheating hound!" he cried, springing to his feet and speaking with a vehemence that astonished me quite as much as the scene which occasioned it. "Do you mean to tell me that it is you who have been playing this trick upon us? Am I to understand that you are the dog who has led us this dance? By heavens, you shall pay for it as severely as ever man paid yet!"
Here he paused for breath, and I seized the opportunity to ask for an explanation.
"Don't you understand?" he cried, wheeling round to me, his eyes flaming, and his usually florid countenance now white with rage. "This miserable wretch is no more the Reverend Colway-Brown than I am."
"Indeed!" I said, with my mouth wide open with surprise. "Then who is he?"
"My own agent—the man we trusted. The man who was to have brought the pearl to England!"
"This is really very pretty," I said, as soon as I had recovered from my astonishment. "And, what's more, it explains a good many things that I could not understand. No wonder he took fright when I mentioned your name at Donovan's Hotel in Cooktown. Had it not been for that bilious attack of yours you would have been with me, and, in that case, you would have recognised him, and we should have been spared this voyage across the Pacific. But still there is one matter that requires consideration." Here I turned to the wretched fellow before us. "If the Reverend Colway-Brown did not murder the agent, it is plain that the agent must have murdered the Reverend Colway-Brown. We gave the parson the credit of that business. It appears, however, that we were mistaken."
By this time the wretched man's agony was almost painful to witness. Try how he would he could not recover his self-possession. Prior to that moment he had imagined himself accused of mere stealing, while the secret of the more serious charge he believed to be still safely locked up in the mail-boat cabin at the bottom of the sea. It came upon him, therefore, as a greater shock to find his crime discovered, and by the very man of all others of whom he had the greatest reason to be afraid. Small wonder that he felt ill at ease. In my own heart I'm afraid I pitied him, but not when I thought of the sinking mail-boat and the wild struggle in cabin 33.