"Very well, if I must, I must," muttered Ned, with feigned reluctance, for at that instant he would not have left Captain Briggs' shabby little schooner for a king's ransom.
"Business for the Blue fleet." Could it be that Fate, by ways devious for even that uncertain goddess, had led his feet into the arcanum of the Blue fleet's secrets?
As Ned descended the cabin stairs into the malodorous little cabin, he determined to find out before he was many hours older the exact meaning of Captain Briggs' remark.
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
THROUGH THE CRACK IN THE WALL.
As Ned's feet sounded on the boards of the stuffy little cuddy, he heard a sharp "bang" above him and then the grating of a rusty iron bolt, as it was shot to, making him a prisoner.
The sound of the grating bolt and the sense that he was a captive, even though in a sense a voluntary one, made Ned see "red" for an instant.
"So they couldn't even trust to my word!" he muttered angrily to himself; and then, "All this precaution shows that there is something very out of the ordinary going forward. Something, too, that unless I miss my guess is in the line of my commission to find out. Gee whiz, I'd give a lot to know right now what is at the bottom of all this how-d'ye-do!"