“Well, the man appeared to be urging something that the girl objected to. ‘I tell you it is too dangerous,’ I heard her say.
“Then the man, in a rough voice, told her she was a foolish woman and that he was going ‘to do it to-night at all costs.’
“‘You may ruin everything,’ she said, but he only laughed and said that if he failed this time, he would succeed later on, anyway.”
“Hum, that’s a mighty interesting scrap of conversation,” mused Jack, “I wonder what the old fox is up to now.”
“Maybe we’d better inform the colonel,” suggested Sam.
“Hardly. Not with the meager information we’ve got. He would only laugh at us. No, we’ll have to wait and see what the event will be. But depend upon it, there is something in the wind.”
Jack was right. What that something was, he was not to learn till later, but it was far more startling and was to involve him more deeply than he imagined.
[CHAPTER XII—A SUDDEN ALARM]
At midnight, while the Tropic Queen was plying ever southward through smooth seas and under a dark canopy of sky lit by countless stars, Jack left his key and, calling Sam, whose turn it was on watch, went below for his customary midnight “snack.” A sleepy-eyed steward served him in the big saloon, which looked empty and desolate with only one light in all its vastness.
Jack ate heartily and then prepared to go on deck again. He had reached the foot of the saloon stairs when a sudden sound made him pause.