"The Missus whaled me; then he chipped in and kicked the back off'm me, drat him!"
"What'd you do, Jerry?"
"Nothin' at all!" responded the boy defiantly. "The mate sent me down to clean his cabin, an' they didn't know I was there, an' the door was open. He says it's a hell of a note about Frenchy not bringin' that phonygraft, and it was the best idea ever was, and she says yes, maybe we'd better give the old son of a gun another taste of hot iron. He says no, there ain't no need of that, because we got the bulge on him now and he'll talk in a hurry, knowin' she's aboard, and it's all Bo'sun's fault for slippin' up and lettin' Frenchy slip up that way. Just then they heard me, and she whaled me and he kicked me up the ladder. Drat him! I wisht I was off'm this old ship!"
Jerry passed on forward, sniffling.
Tom Dennis stood very still. He felt Florence draw herself up; he caught a startled gasp from her lips; but he was thinking with a wild sickening surety, of what the skipper had said. Frenchy—and the phonograph!
There was the missing link. No use disguising the facts any longer; no use trying to cover up what was only too obvious! Frenchy—that was the assassin; and Ericksen had been in partnership with him, there in Chicago! And Hathaway would talk now that Florence was aboard——
Tom Dennis shivered suddenly. "Come, dear!" he said in a strange voice. "Come below. I have something to tell you."
He felt that she was sobbing softly, and halted. "What's the matter, Florence?"
She only shook her head, and taking his arm accompanied him to the companionway. Dennis was alarmed by her attitude; upon reaching their own cabin she threw her arms about him, a sudden paroxysm of sobs shaking her whole body. Dennis could obtain no response to his queries for a moment, until the girl suddenly looked up into his eyes.
"I—I couldn't tell you before, Tom! I thought perhaps it had been the wreck, and all that," she said, brokenly. "But poor father—his feet were burned, and his arms—at least, I know now that the scars were of burns! You heard what Jerry said. And father's eyes are giving him a lot of trouble; sometimes he can't use them at all, and it seems to hurt him when they're open. I—I can't dare to think that anyone would have deliberately hurt him——"