He read the two letters aloud. They were brief, but explicit. One contained Kinahan's orders to Kingdom as to the disposal of the Orinoco. The other was a sort of invoice, or consignment note, relating to the person of one Marrable, who had apparently been shipped on board the night before the ship sailed. Each of these documents, it may be added, contained sufficient matter to ensure penal servitude for their author.
Hughie stopped reading, and there was a long and appreciative silence. Then Allerton said:—
"What beats me is to understand how Kinahan could have been such a mug as to commit these schemes to paper, and how Kingdom should have been such a fool as to want to keep them. I'd have let them go down in the Orinoco."
"I expect one explanation covers both cases," said Hughie. "Kingdom probably demanded his orders in black and white, as a guarantee that he would get his money when he had done his job. Otherwise he had no claim on Kinahan for a penny, beyond his ordinary wage as skipper. Kinahan probably agreed, stipulating that the letters should be handed back to him when they squared accounts. It was a risky thing to do, but when two thieves can't trust each other, and go dropping about documentary evidence to that effect—well, that's where poor but deserving people like ourselves come in. No, I shouldn't think Kingdom would want to leave these behind; and I opine that he's a pretty sick man by this time if he has missed them."
He folded the letters up, and put them away carefully.
"Now, gentlemen," he said briskly, "I propose that we go below and see if there is sufficient steam on the Orinoco to pump the rest of the water out of her and get the propeller revolving again. We'll have to damp down most of the fires, because we can't run too many firemen, but I think we ought to knock four or five knots out of her in ordinary weather. Luckily, seventy-five per cent of the ship's company are competent engineers. After that we'll have some breakfast, and after that we'll make tracks for home. We'll work"—he smacked his lips cheerily, like an energetic pedagogue on the first morning of term—"in shifts of three. Two men will run the engine-room and stokehold, and the third will take the wheel. The fourth can sleep. That will give us each eighteen hours on and six hours off. I don't know where we are, and I have no means of finding out, as Captain Kingdom has walked off with the chart and most of the proper instruments. But we must be near land, or they would not have taken to the boats yet. If we keep steaming steadily east (with a little north in it), at about a hundred miles a day,—which I fancy is about our limit,—we should knock up against something sooner or later. And when we do, we'll get hold of the proper authorities, and I venture to think that with the help of these two letters and that doctored bilge-valve down below we shall be able to prepare a welcome for those three boat-loads of shipwrecked mariners, when they arrive, that will surprise them. Also, I fancy there will be pickings for you in the way of salvage. What a game!" Hughie stood up, and inhaled a great breath. This was real life! "Are you on, boys?" he cried suddenly. "Is the old Orinoco going to the bottom this journey?"
The crew rose at him and gave three cheers.
Later that afternoon, as the Orinoco pounded along at a strictly processional pace through the ruffling waters,—the glass was falling and a breeze getting up,—Deputy-Quartermaster Lionel Hinchcliffe Welford-Welford Allerton, late scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, sometime Assistant Deck-Hand in the mercantile marine, descried from his post on the bridge a small moving object upon the starboard bow.
It was the Orinoco's whale-boat, which was proceeding under two lugsails on a course parallel with the steamer's.