"Well, in the first place, how on earth you managed to die and come to life again so cleverly? Juanita told me she saw you lying stiff and stark in your bunk."
"So she did, as far as she knew; but I was only playing 'possum. It was the one way out of my difficulty, you see. I knew I had to get rid of her, and there was no other fashion in which it could be managed."
"Then the captain was in the secret after all, and his dislike to you was all assumed?"
"Every bit! But he was a money-grubbing old dog, was Boulger, and it cost me a cool hundred to bring him up to the scratch. Once that was done, all was plain sailing. After leaving Tahiti, cholera, Yellow Jack, fish-poisoning, or some other disease came aboard, and the crew and mate went down before it like ninepins. There was my chance! I pretended to go under to it too. The skipper acted his part like a little man, and wouldn't let Juanita into the cabin for fear of detection. Then, in the night, I died. Next day, according to her wish, my dummy was taken ashore, and buried on Vanua Lava, while I was safely stowed away in the skipper's cabin, until we reached Thursday Island. There she remained to hunt up a way of getting back to look for that locket."
"While you?"
"Next morning I caught a craft sailing this way, intending to pick up a mail-boat from Batavia, home. But luck was against me; I ran athwart the hawse of a Dutch officer; put a bullet into him, and got locked up. That's how I came here. Want to know any more?"
"One thing. Now you're alive, what is going to become of your wife?"
"My wife? And who may she be? Never heard of the lady."
"But Juanita?"
Veneda whistled a long note of astonishment.