“Sure,” Fred answered, and settled himself on the broken edge of the captain’s berth.
“It makes me laugh,” said Jo as he crossed the deck with the others, “to think of pop holding a gun on them down in the cabin!”
They had left the lantern with the men below but Bain’s torch carried ample light. It gave Ann a thrill to think that she should be crossing the deck with a moving light. How often she had looked toward the wreck before she climbed into bed, hoping to see a pin prick of yellow there as she had seen it on the night she arrived at the Bailey house! And now that the light was here she was here with it! Not she, but her mother, was looking at it from the house windows, looking out through the rain and wondering what was happening down here.
She wondered where Bain could be taking them, and then she realized that they were headed straight for the demon figure.
Bain strode up to it and flashed his light over its grotesque outlines. He looked back over his shoulder to the Seymours and laughed. “Jim Rand knew his best friend aboard this boat.”
Reaching forward he thrust his hand into the mouth of the figurehead, fumbling and stretching to the end of his reach, and when he brought his hand back it held a huge roll of paper money.
“All in hundreds” he explained. “A pretty good haul for Uncle Sam. I never found it until to-night! And it was a lucky thing that I left them where they were before I went down to the cabin.”
“Oh—may I touch them?” asked Ann with a shiver of excitement.
Bain handed them to her. “Take them, if you like.” And to Mr. Seymour he said, “I’ll be glad to get that safely into some one else’s care.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied Mr. Seymour. “Hold them tight, daughter; we can’t have the wind blowing any of it away.”