THE GIANT AWAKES
Allen Drew had not been a party to the conference between Captain Hamilton and Grimshaw after supper. After the strenuous exertions of the day he had felt the need of a bath and a change of linen.
Once more clothed and feeling refreshed, Drew paced the afterdeck with his cigar, hearing the voices of Captain Hamilton and Tyke in the former's cabin, but having no desire just then to join them.
Although his body was rejuvenated, his mind was far from peaceful. He had not lost hope of their finding what they had come so far to search for; he still believed the pirate hoard to be buried on the side of the whale's hump. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" but hope had not been long enough deferred in this case to sicken any of the party of treasure seekers. Yet there was a great sickness at the heart of Allen Drew.
That particular incident of the afternoon that had brought the remembrance of Parmalee so keenly to his mind, had thrown a pall over his thoughts not easily lifted.
It had shown, too, that Parmalee's strange and awful death had strongly affected Ruth. That mystery was likely to erect a barrier between the girl and himself. Indeed, it had done so already. Drew felt it—he knew it!
There was in her father's attitude something intangible, yet certain enough, which spelled the captain's doubt of him. As long as Parmalee's disappearance remained unexplained, as long as Ditty's story could not be disproved, Drew felt that Captain Hamilton would nurse in his mind a doubt of his innocence.
And that doubt, if it remained, whether Drew was ever tried for the crime of Parmalee's murder or not, just as surely put Ruth out of his grasp as though his hands actually dripped of the dead man's blood.
Captain Hamilton would never see his daughter marry a man under such a cloud. Drew appreciated the character of the schooner's commander too thoroughly to base any illusions upon the fact that Hamilton treated him kindly. They were partners in this treasure hunt. The doubloons once secured, the Bertha Hamilton once in port, Drew well knew that Ruth's father would do what he felt to be his duty. He would be Drew's accuser at the bar of public justice. That, undoubtedly, was a foregone conclusion.
Plunged in the depth of these despairing thoughts, Drew was startled by the light fall of a soft hand upon his arm, and he descried the slight figure of Ruth beside him.