“Look here,” I said, lighting a cigarette, “I may be stupid, but I can’t get you. Granting your latter supposition, why should any one not only want to pose as a parson when he isn’t one, but also take the trouble to send fool messages around the universe?”
“Has it occurred to you,” said Jim quietly, “that two very useful pieces of information have been included in those two fool messages? First, our exact position at a given time, and our course and our speed. Secondly, the approximate time when the convalescing curate, in the yacht belonging to the kind friend, will impinge on that course. And the third fact—not contained in either message, but which may possibly have a bearing on things, is that on board this yacht there is half a million in gold, and quarter of a million in pearls.
“Good heavens!” I muttered, staring at him foolishly.
“Mark you, Dick, I may have stumbled into a real first-class mare’s nest. The Reverend Samuel and his pals may be all that they say and more, but I don’t like this tender solicitude for my salvation.”
“Are you going to say anything to the skipper?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “I think I shall tell James. But he’s a pig-headed fellow, and he’ll probably be darned rude about it. I should, if I were he. They aren’t worrying over his salvation.”
And with that he went to bed, leaving me thinking fairly acutely. Could there be anything in it? Could it be possible that any one would attempt piracy in the twentieth century, especially when the ship, as the skipper had pointed out, was equipped with wireless? The idea was ridiculous, and the next morning I went around to Jim’s cabin to tell him so. It was empty, and there was a note lying on the bed addressed to me. It was brief and to the point:
I am ill in bed with a sharp dose of fever. Pass the good news on to our friend--the parson.
Jim
I did so, at breakfast, and I thought I detected a shade of relief pass over the face of the Reverend Samuel though he inquired most solicitously about the sufferer and even went so far as to wish to give him some patent remedy of his own. But I assured him that quinine and quiet were all that were required, and with that the matter dropped.