"You mean that little coop up above the bridge, with the awning?" asked Nora Sayers.
"Just that. I'll get there before they discover the blaze."
The two women stared at him, then glanced at each other in perplexed wonder.
"What do you mean, Mr. Barnes?" demanded Ellen Maggs, a faint touch of color in her cheeks. "Are you joking about getting the ship afire?"
"No," said Jim Barnes. His tone was unusually crisp, and the look that he gave them was keen and incisive. "No. Don't let out a peep before the steward, now! A mutiny is due to start at one o'clock, and, so far as I can see, most of the officers will get wiped out at the first crack. Mutiny or piracy, I'm not sure which. I've got to set the hooker afire and keep the men so blamed busy they'll have no time for murder. Please pass the butter, Miss Maggs."
His matter-of-fact manner made the two women at first doubt his words, then believe them with a frightful sense of conviction; Ellen Maggs stared at him from eyes that slowly widened. Glancing up and meeting her gaze, Jim Barnes was suddenly startled by the intensity of her look, by the revealed womanhood he saw in her face; he had not dreamed that she could look so beautiful.
"I'm sorry I scared you," he said, smilingly. There was an infectious quality to his smile; perhaps because of his direct blue eyes, wrinkled at the corners; perhaps because of his wide and humorous mouth and strong chin. "But the steward's coming now——"
"You're in earnest?" demanded Nora Sayers, who had gone a little white.
"Quite. Nobody aboard can use the wireless, unless you ladies can. Any chance?"
Ellen Maggs shook her head.