But why had the captain been singled out as the victim? Was the lascar merely bent on wreaking vengeance on those who had injured him? Or was he a tool in other and invisible hands?
Feverishly he asked himself these questions as he removed the fatal cord, and composed the distorted features into a semblance of what they had been in life; asked, but could not answer them. Only, back of the whole terrible business, he seemed to see the cunning, unscrupulous shark-charmer, bent on retaining the pearls at any cost, fanning the lascar's hatred into fiercer flame, guiding his ready hand in its work of death.
Could he, alone and all but unaided, cope with the cunning of this enemy who, while himself unseen, made his devilish power felt at every turn? The responsibility thrown upon his shoulders by the captain's murder involved other and weightier issues than the mere recovery of a few thousand pounds' worth of stolen pearls. Jack must be rescued, if indeed he was still alive; while, if he too was dead, his and the captain's murderers must be brought to justice. This was the task before him; no light one for a youth of eighteen, with only a brace of timid native servants at his back. Yet he addressed himself to it with all the passionate determination born of his love for the chum and his grief for the friend who had stood by him “through thick and thin.” There was no hesitation, no wavering. “Do or die!” It was come to that now.
The captain's burial must be his first consideration; for Don had lived long enough in the East to know how remorseless is the climate in its treatment of the dead. Morning at the latest must snatch the old sailor's familiar form for ever from his sight.
A tarpaulin lay in the “fo'csle,” and with this he determined to hide the lascar's dread handiwork from view before waking the blacks, who still slept. While he was disposing this appropriate pall above the corpse, the captain's jacket fell open, and in an inside pocket he caught sight of a small volume.
“Perhaps he has papers about him that ought to be preserved,” thought Don. “I'll have a look.”
Drawing the volume from its resting-place with reverent touch, he found it to be a copy of the Book of Common Prayer, sadly worn and battered, like its owner, by long service. Here and there a leaf was turned down, or a passage marked by the dent of a heavy thumb-nail—the sailor's pencil. But what arrested his attention were these words written on the yellow fly-leaf in a bold, irregular hand, and in ink so faded as to make it evident that many years had elapsed since they were penned:
“To all and sundry as sights these lines, when-somedever it may please the Good Skipper to tow this 'ere old hulk safe into port, widelicit. If so be as I'm spared to go aloft when on the high-seas, wery good! the loan of a hammock and a bit o' ballast is all I axes. But if so be as I'm ewentually stranded on shore, why then, d'ye mind me, who-somedever ye be as sights these 'ere lines, I ain't to be battened down like a lubberly landsman, d'ye see, but warped off-shore an' shipped for the Eternal V'yage as a true seaman had ought to be. And may God have mercy on my soul.—Amen. The last Log and Testament of me,
“(Signed) John Mango, A.B.”
The faded characters grew blurred and misty before Don's eyes as he scanned them. Closing the book, he grasped the captain's cold hand impulsively, and in tones choked with emotion, cried: