"Why did you tell that man to stop?" he cried, angrily. "I'll trouble you to remember that I'm——"
"And I'll just trouble you to sit down where you are and hold your tongue, Mr. Ebbington," said Alie, dropping her American accent altogether, and drawing a revolver from beneath her cloak. "The game is over as far as you are concerned, so you may as well submit with as good a grace as possible."
"What does this mean, Miss Sanderson?" he cried excitedly.
"Sit down there, as I tell you," she answered, "and don't make any noise, or you'll get into trouble. I shall answer no questions, but if you attempt to move I promise you I'll shoot you there and then."
He said no more, but sat between us trembling like the arrant coward he was. Alie went forward to the engineer and said something in Malay; then, after a moment's conversation with one of the crew, she returned aft, took the tiller, and steered for the open sea. The little craft fumed and fussed on her way for an hour or so, tossing the foam off either bow, and covering the distance in first-rate style.
Suddenly the look-out, posted forrard, uttered a cry, and next moment we saw ahead of us a green light. It was obscured and revealed three times. This, I knew, was the yacht's signal, and in less than a quarter of an hour we were alongside, had hitched on, and were safely aboard. The launch's crew were then suitably rewarded and sent back to Singapore.
As we reached the deck Ebbington must have read the yacht's name on a life-buoy, and realised into whose hands he had fallen. For a moment he stood rooted to the spot, then he staggered a pace forward, clutched at a stay, and, missing it, fell upon the deck in a dead faint. As I stooped to see what was the matter with him I felt the tremor of the screw. Our errand was accomplished. Singapore was a thing of the past. We were on our way back to the island once more.
CHAPTER X.
After the exciting events in which I had been a participator that evening, it may not be a matter for surprise that, on going to bed, my night was a troubled one. Hour after hour I tumbled and tossed in my bunk, and with the first sign of day, finding sleep still impossible, dressed and went on deck. It was as lovely a morning as any man could wish to see, with a pale turquoise sky overhead, across which clouds of fleecy whiteness sped with extraordinary rapidity. A fine breeze hummed in the shrouds, and the peculiar motion of the schooner, combined with one glance over the side, was sufficient to convince me that a brisk sea was running. I walked aft, said "Good-morning!" to the officer of the watch, who was the same taciturn individual, with the scar upon his face, I have described earlier in the story, and then, partly from curiosity and partly from force of habit, took a squint at the compass card. Our course was N. N. E. exactly, but as I did not know whether or not this was a bluff of some kind, such a circumstance told me but little. I therefore leaned against the taffrail, looked up at the canvas, bellying out like great balloons above my head, and resigned myself to my thoughts. It had an exhilarating, yet for some reason bewildering, effect upon me, that stretch of canvas standing out so white against the clear blue sky, the chasing clouds, the bright sunshine, the dancing, rolling sea, and the splashing of the water alongside. The schooner was evidently in a playful mood, for one moment she would be aiming her jib-boom at the sun and the next be dipping her nose down into the trough and sending a shower of spray rattling on the fo'c's'le like hail. Not a sail was in sight, though it was evident from the presence of a lookout in the fore-top, and the constant scrutiny of the southwestern horizon maintained by the officer of the watch, that one was momentarily expected.