Tunis had to see his consignees while the freight was being discharged; when he got back to the wharf there was nobody aboard the schooner save Horry and Zebedee. The latter had a broken oar in his hand and he and the ancient seaman seemed to be in a condition of utter amazement.
"What's to do now?" demanded the skipper.
"They've gone, Cap'n Latham," stammered Zebedee. "Say they won't put foot on the Seamew's deck again. That—that confounded 'Rion—"
"What's the matter with Orion now?" exclaimed Tunis. "I hoped I was well rid of him. Has he turned up here at Hollis?"
"Look at this," said Zebedee, shaking the broken oar. "Here's what it seems 'Rion found in the hold two trips back. So those fellows say. He left it with 'em. And they say the schooner is a murder ship and they won't try to work her no further."
Tunis seized the piece of oar. Along one side was a streak of faint blue paint. He knew immediately where he had seen that broken oar before—leaning against the door frame of Pareta's cottage in Portygee Town, when he had last talked with the old man's daughter.
"What in thunder!"
He had turned it over and saw the straggling letters burned into the wood: MARLIN B. Newbegin looked at Tunis with an expression which betrayed a great perturbation of soul. The old man could scarcely show pallor under the mahogany of his face, but it was plain that superstition had him by the throat.
"So this is the thing that rotten 'Rion played them with, is it?" Tunis demanded. "Trying to make them think my beautiful Seamew was once the Marlin B.? Why, the poor fools, this broken oar came out of Mike Pareta's woodpile, or I'm a dog-fish! See that blue streak? I saw this broken oar at Pareta's house. Bet you anything Eunez had something to do with it, too. Though why she should want to harm me, who never said a cross word to her, I can't see."
"She and your cousin are mighty thick," Zebedee said reflectively. "That's a fact."