Nettle, with a large-hearted tolerance for her companion's over-wrought condition, nodded and went out on to the upper deck. The steamer was gliding through the calm water at half-speed, having reached the fishing grounds of the Brixham trawlers off Berry Head. The sturdy little craft were clustered thick as ants on either beam. It was necessary to thread a cautious track through them if an untimely collision was not to furnish a clue to Violet's disappearance as soon as it was discovered in the morning. Nugent's "sealed orders" had been explicit on this head, and Simon Brant was not the man to risk punishment and the loss of his huge reward for lack of attention to detail.
"The inference at Ottermouth when Miss Maynard is missed will be that she has voluntarily accompanied Chermside on his flight," these instructions run. "On the whole it will serve our purpose as well as another, but it is imperative that the direction of this flight be unknown. I have Mr. Maynard's confidence, and I shall do my best to foster the idea that Chermside, whom he will of course regard as a free agent, will be likely to make for America, blinding pursuit by taking an eastern course up channel, and then a northerly one round the Scottish coast into the Atlantic. In reality you will run down channel to the westward, and in doing so you must therefore avoid undue speed or anything that may draw attention to your vessel as the one in which the 'elopement' has been carried out."
Nettle Jimpson, knowing nothing about the reason, was nevertheless annoyed at the slow speed, because it would delay the "one chance" at Plymouth to which she had pinned her faith. But realizing that the delay was beyond her control, she devoted herself to the matter in hand.
Casting an upward glance at the bridge, where the quartermaster at the wheel and several other figures were dimly visible against the starlit sky, she skulked along in the shadows of the deck superstructure till she came to the companion stairs leading down to the main deck. It was but a short distance from the door of the saloon and she met no one, though both from the stern and the forecastle gruff whisperings told her that it was a wakeful ship. Stealing down the stairs, she reached the main deck unmolested, and looked about her. Evidently it was here that the officers and the engineers were berthed. Open cabin doors yielded glimpses of oilskin coats and tarpaulin hats, while a well-scrubbed table in the centre of the open space was spread with the remains of a meal that had been partaken of by half a dozen people.
But of the prisoner, or of any closed door behind which he could be confined, there was no sign. She continued to explore, and at the forward end of the deck found an open hatchway with a flight of almost perpendicular wooden steps running down into the pitch darkness of the lower deck. Undaunted by the steepness of the ladder and the absence of light, she descended into the abyss, where the smell of paint and cordage told her that she was near the ship's storeroom. Realizing at once that down here her eyes were useless for the quest, she raised her voice and called——
"Where are you, Mr. Chermside?"
Nothing but silence followed, and emboldened by the fact that none of the Cobra's ruffian crew seemed to be on the lower deck, she called louder still, and this time she got an answer—an inarticulate utterance, half-sigh and half-groan, from out of the inky blackness. Picking her way towards it, her groping hands encountered the blank space of an open door.
"Mr. Chermside, are you in there?" she asked, excitement rather than fear of being overheard causing her to drop her voice to a whisper.
Again that curious sound but no informing reply, and Nettle crept into the cabin. She had penetrated but a few feet when she stumbled over something, and, stooping down, she felt a soft substance which her sense of touch informed her was the body of a man. The next instant she gave vent to a cry of horror when her searching hands came into contact with a steel chain which her busy fingers quickly traced to a metal circlet grasping a man's leg.
"Mr. Chermside!" she scarcely breathed. "Give me water," came the faint response from the unseen.