"What child?"
"Isbel."
"Well, what of that?"
"What of that? She stood there watching it all, and then she ran off as if some one were going to kill her. It was brutal to let her see it; goodness knows she has stuck to us and done everything for us a mortal could do, and now we repay her by letting her see us hanging one of her own people."
Schumer seemed disturbed and irritated by this news.
"One cannot think of everything," said he; "you speak as though you were accusing me. Am I to do all the thinking? Well, she has seen what she has seen, and it cannot be helped, though I would not have had it for a good deal. That girl may be very useful to us yet, and we do not want to make an enemy of her. She will brood over this and say nothing, and then maybe let us have it in the back some time. Well, we cannot help it; we must remedy it somehow. There is no use in talking about it with the business we have to do before us. First we must bring stores and some canvas to make tents for those labor men. Come, we will get the stuff together now and take it to them in the whaleboat; we will take two of the crew with us to help to row."
They rousted out some spare canvas from the sail room of the schooner, and had it sent into the whaleboat, which was still alongside, with the two Solomon Islanders who had rowed her out sitting on the thwarts and staring up at the form dangling overhead.
It seemed to fill them with curiosity, nothing more; yet Floyd noticed that when Schumer spoke to them they jumped to attention as though they had been addressed by some powerful chief. The crew also ran about at his least sign, hauled with all their energy, and hung on his words.
Schumer did not go to the cache for provisions; he opened the schooner's lazaret. She was well supplied. Though the mutineers had killed their officers they had not sacked the provision room and broached the liquor as they would have done had they been Europeans.
"They were helpless, you see, like a duck with a broken wing," said Schumer. "Didn't know where they were; didn't know who would catch them. Kanakas will drink, but they don't fly to drink like our chaps; it's not grained in them."