“I have, indeed, sir,” I replied.
“Take a chair, Hawkesley,” interrupted the skipper; “pour yourself out a glass of wine, and let us have your story in the fewest possible words. Mr Armitage, do me the favour to ascertain the brig’s present whereabouts and let me know. Now, Hawkesley, we are ready to listen to you.”
As the skipper ceased, Armitage bowed and withdrew, whilst I very hastily sketched the rise and progress of my suspicions, from Monsieur Le Breton’s first visit up to that present moment.
Before I had proceeded very far, however, Armitage returned with the intelligence that the brig was undoubtedly adrift and already some distance astern of us, and that the topman, who had been aloft to inspect, had reported that he thought he could detect men on her yards.
“Turn up the hands at once then, sir, if you please, and see everything ready for slipping our cable and making sail at a moment’s notice. But let everything be done in absolute silence; and keep a hand aloft to watch the brig and report anything further he may notice on board her; it really looks as though we were on the brink of some important discovery. Now go ahead with your story, Hawkesley,” said the skipper.
I proceeded as rapidly as possible, merely stating what suspicious circumstances had come under my own notice, and leaving Captain Vernon to draw his own deductions. When I had finished, the skipper turned to Smellie and said:
“Am I to understand, from your remark made a short time ago, that you, too, have suspected this mysterious brig, Mr Smellie?”
“Yes,” answered Smellie, “I certainly had a vague feeling that there was something queer about her; but my suspicions were not nearly so clear and strong as Hawkesley’s, and subsequent events quite drove the matter out of my mind.”
“Um!” remarked the skipper meditatively; “it is strange, very strange. I never noticed anything peculiar about the craft.”
“The brig is now about half a mile distant, sir, and is making sail,” reported Armitage at that moment, presenting himself again at the cabin door.