"Because nothing is safe. I think it is—you think it is; but if you found out my secret, why shouldn't the Albino have boxed it out and anticipated us, eh?"
In reality he was not thinking anything of the kind; he was telling himself that the peculiar note in her voice when she referred to the money was not quite what it should have been at the moment of his declaration of love. In spite of her cleverness, it evidenced what lay uppermost in her mind. But he was not going to betray that he had noticed anything.
While they talked the moon rose, and lent a wondrous beauty to the night, sweeping the stars from the sky as if by magic, and turning the sombre water into the likeness of a silver sea. The white and idle canvas threw strange shadows upon the decks, and with the moon's coming a light breeze stole across the surface of the deep, so that the schooner began to draw a little faster through the water. The bo'sun turned on his heel, and came aft to where the other two were standing.
"Nice evenin'," he said, by way of introduction; "the moon there makes it real pleasant on deck, don't it? You'll excuse me, sir, but maybe you don't happen to have a chaw of tobacco about you?"
Veneda gave him a piece, at the same time asking if there was any further sign of sickness forrard. The bos'un did not think so, and casting an eye aloft at the canvas now beginning to fill, and then at the compass card, prepared to air his theory of the malady.
"It's my belief," he said, expectorating vigorously over the side, "that it's no more nor less than pison,—fish-pisoning, I reckon it. Don't you tell me that cholera or Yellow Jack's a-goin' to come aboard this while out o' port—not it! Now, I mind a case once, where a schooner's crew mutinied ten days out from Sydney, their tucker not bein' good enough for 'em forrard. What must they do, when they'd got rid of the old man and the mate overboard, but break open the lazarette, and set to work on all the tinned fish they could lay their hands on!"
"What was the result?" Veneda asked carelessly.
"Why, that inside of three hours every mother's son o' that blamed crew was lyin' a-rollin' an' a-kickin' about the deck o' that schooner, turnin' black in the face, and lookin' for all the world as if they had swallowed half-a-pint o' pison apiece. When they was picked up by a man-o'-war, there was only one on 'em left to tell the tale, and he wouldn't ha' been there but for not bein' hungry that night, having started on cuddy bread, which is good an' fillin' at the price."
"And what makes you think," asked Juanita, "that the men on this ship have been poisoned? Have they eaten such fish as you describe?"
"Well now, there you have me, ma'am; I don't know as they have, but maybe it ain't fish this time, maybe it's somethin' else just as bad. For my part, I——"