"He's been hanging around the Chinese crew, sir, ever since we came aboard. I went through their quarters down below forward a while ago, and there he lay in one of their bunks, dead to the world, with the pipe across his chest"
"The useless old sot!" exclaimed Captain Sheldon "I had made up my mind to get rid of him this time, anyway. You know he has been in the family, so to speak. But I don't like the idea of his going off with his native gang. Combined with the opium business, it looks suspicious. You'd better keep an eye on him. He's got a grudge against me, you know, since I took away his stuff"
"I guess they'll all bear watching, sir"
"Oh, nonsense! There isn't the slightest cause for alarm. It's perfectly evident that this craft is a peaceful trader, and we could handle the whole gang of 'em if they began to make trouble. They won't, though, never fear; a Chinaman is too big a coward. This captain seems to be quite an intelligent fellow; I've just been having a yarn with him. He has given up his room to me; well, not much of a room, nothing but a bunk and a door, but such as it is, it's all he has. Funny quarters they have down below, like a labyrinth of passages, all leading nowhere.
The mate laughed. "Funny enough forward, too; a damned stinking hole, if you ask me, sir"
While they were talking on the poop, Wang appeared on deck forward, went to the weather rail and sniffed a deep breath of the land breeze. He had had an hour's opium sleep—an hour of heaven, an hour of life again. Now he could command his faculties. Blindness was no hindrance to work in the dark; was even an advantage, since for many months now he had been accustomed to feeling and groping his way. Fate had been good to him, at the last. Now he possessed the strength to do what he would have to do.
The familiar voices of the mate and the captain came to his ears, but he did not glance in their direction. The least move on his part to give information would have been his last. He had heard enough already to know that the death of the whole ship's company that night was being actively planned, for the sake of the boats and the mysterious tin box that Captain Sheldon carried.
III
In spite of physical exhaustion, it was nearly midnight before Captain Sheldon left the deck and crawled into the narrow den under the poop-deck that had been given up to him by the Chinese captain. He could not get to sleep for a long while. He was taking his loss very hard; that inflexible, proud disposition would almost have met death sooner than admit an error. At length, however, he fell into a light and uneasy slumber.
He was awakened some time later by a light touch on the arm—a touch that started him from sleep without alarming him into action. A voice whispered softly in his ear