“I suppose he was afraid that I would go to the village and make trouble for him,” replied Chase; “and I can assure him that his fears were well founded. I am not going to be bound hand and foot and shut up in a dark hole like that for nothing; now I tell you. If I don’t raise a breeze in this settlement as soon as I put my foot on shore again, it will be because I don’t know how. He didn’t help the matter much by keeping me a prisoner, for Wilson is at liberty, and I know he won’t eat or sleep till he tells my father everything.”
“And so they intended to lose Walter in the West Indies? That’s a queer idea.”
“I call it absurd. That boy couldn’t be lost in any part of the world. He would find his way home from the North Pole. But there’s another thing I want to tell you,” added Chase, sinking his voice almost to a whisper, and assuming a very mysterious air which made his companion impatient to hear what he was about to say, “and that is, that Bayard’s father is the leader of this gang.”
“No!” cried Featherweight again.
“It’s a fact. While Bayard was talking with Coulte just outside the locker—I heard every word he said—some one whistled from the shore, and the old Frenchman declared that it was the captain. I heard a boat put off from the vessel and come back with Mr. Bell. I know it was he, because I recognised his step and also his voice. I have heard him speak a good many times during the three weeks I have been visiting at his house, and it is impossible that I should be mistaken.”
“Where do you suppose he is now?” asked Featherweight, who told himself over and over again that Chase had certainly taken leave of his senses, and didn’t know what he was talking about.
“He may be on board the vessel, for all I know; or he may have gone ashore with the yawl and left it where you found it. We’d better be going, too.”
“I should say we had,” replied Featherweight, making his way cautiously up the ladder. Although he did not believe a word of the story he had heard—he told himself it was utterly unreasonable—he thought it best to be on the safe side, and to reconnoitre the deck before he went up there. “I am glad I have been able to do you a service, Chase,” he added; “but if I had known that this craft was a smuggler, you wouldn’t have caught me——”
Featherweight suddenly paused, his face grew as pale as death, and he backed down from the ladder with much greater haste than he had ascended it. While he was speaking he happened to look upward, and saw Mr. Bell leaning over the combings of the hatchway, glaring down at him like a caged hyena. He began to put a little more faith in Chase’s story, now.