“You can set me ashore, can’t you, young man, for a ten-dollar bill?” inquired Hilton.
“Certainly, if Captain Hampton knows no reason why you shouldn’t leave the vessel,” Tom answered.
“Mr. Hilton has surrendered his passage ticket, and there is nothing to detain him aboard,” replied the steamship’s master.
“Your baggage ready, sir?” asked Tom.
“Nothing but this bag,” laughed Hilton, stepping back and picking up his hand luggage.
“Come along, then, sir.”
As Tom Halstead pressed his way through the throng of passengers gathered on deck, he heard several wondering, and some admiring, remarks relative to the youthfulness of the skipper of so handsome and trim a yacht.
Hilton followed the young skipper down over the side. Tom turned to help him to the deck of the “Restless,” but Hilton lightly leaped across, holding his bag before him. Tom Halstead, as he turned, got a good look at that bag. It was one that he was likely to remember for many a day. The article was of dark red leather, and 32 on one side the surface for a space as large as a man’s hand had been torn away, probably in some accident.
“Here’s the passage money, Captain,” said Hilton, passing over a ten-dollar bill. Murmuring his thanks, the young skipper crumpled up the bill, shoving it into a trousers pocket, then hurried aft.
Clodis was a short, almost undersized man of perhaps forty-five, stout and well dressed. His head was so bandaged, as he lay in the lower berth of the port stateroom, that not much of his face was visible.