When they returned to the cabin to relieve Fred and to get Bain’s captives the dog hung close to Jo’s heels and could not be persuaded to leave him for an instant. The dog followed at his heels down the companionway and stood behind him in the passage outside the cabin.
“Ready?” asked Bain. “Come along now, men. We’ll be moving along to where you can stay awhile without being disturbed. A fine evening for a stroll of three or four miles.”
But Tom did not move. “If you want me, get me up,” he growled.
At sound of his voice came a scratching of paws in the passage and through the doorway leaped the dog, making straight for him. Jo sprang as quickly and seized the shaggy coat of his new friend. And in the meantime Tom had scrambled to his feet without any more argument.
“Captain Jim’s dog,” Charlie crowed with shrill laughter. “He remembers you all right, Tom. You forgot to heave him overboard with the rest of ’em!”
Under Fred’s vigilant gun the men were herded up the ladder and across to the side of the ship. The rain still poured ceaselessly and the wind blew in gusts that pierced Ann’s wet clothes and made her shiver. But she was not too uncomfortable and tired to lose her desire to know every detail of what had happened on the wreck.
“There’s one thing you haven’t told us,” she said to Bain. “What was it that you found in the leg of the table?”
“You children had better be trained to be first-class detectives. There wasn’t much you didn’t see last night, I should say. Well, it won’t do any harm to tell you and I think you deserve to know. The papers were a sort of log that Rand kept; told where he got his cargoes and how he disposed of them and for how much. It is much more important than the money, to the government.”
Ann hadn’t thought of that; of course, a man who was willing to buy smuggled goods was exactly as dishonest as the person who sold them. It made it seem to her as though Captain Rand wasn’t quite as—as—— She didn’t like to say “bad” even to herself, for surely a man couldn’t be really bad if he had made his dog so fond of him that the dog had rather starve than go away from the place where he’d last seen his master.
As they left the wreck Warren Bain flashed his torch into the face of the figurehead, high above them as they stood on the beach. The light shone straight up into the huge ugly face and, to Ann, the demon still grinned with its eyes looking far out and away, as though it saw something they couldn’t see and knew a great deal more than human beings ever could know. Suddenly Ann wished that she might never have to see that demon again. His work was done; he had taken care of the captain’s money, and now was there any use of his staying there to frighten people? Perhaps to-morrow Mr. Bailey would carry out his intention of burning him with an accompaniment of lobsters and corn and roast potatoes. What a wonderful plan that was, because then she would remember that glorious picnic and let that memory offset some of her other recollections of the figurehead!