"Aye, aye, sir; that's it. There is something fishy goin' on, I'm certain. And now here's somethin' else you ought to know—somethin' about this red-bearded, nigger-drivin' swab of a Warner. I know the cove, though he doesn't know me."
"Ah!" said Barry with quickened interest, "what do you know of him, Joe?"
Taking his pipe out of his mouth and speaking very slowly the seaman repeated his last words.
"I know him, sir, now, though I didn't when he first came aboard with his crowd o' bloody cannibals. But when you give him that knock-out lift under the jaw the other day, me and Sam Button, you will remember, helped him down into the cabin and laid him in his bunk, hopin' the swab was dead. The skipper told us to open his shirt at the neck, as he was a-breathin' so bad, and when we opens his shirt I sees a ship tattooed across his chest—then I knew where I'd seen that there chap with the red beard and that partikler tattooing before. It was the picture of a Yankee man-o'-war with her name over it—The Franklin, and I reckerlected when I'd seen it last—about nine year ago in Fiji."
"Go on, Joe," said the officer, as the man hesitated.
"Right, sir; but now I might as well tell you how I did come to see it. I was bummin' around in Levuka lookin' for a ship, havin' just done four months' hard, when I meets a petty officer belonging to a gunboat, who asked me if I wanted a week's job. He was scourin' all round the place to pick up sailor men, so me and about half a dozen more chaps was taken off on board the gunboat. She had been cruising in the Solomon Islands, and a lot of her men died from fever. Then when she was coming back to Fiji she got caught in a hurricane and dismasted, and sailed into Levuka under jury-masts, and us chaps were set to work to help refit her for the voyage to Sydney. And the first thing I saw when I got aboard was this here chap Warner, who was washing himself up for'ard with a sentry standing over him and his leg irons lying on the deck ready to be shackled on again as soon as he had finished washing. I noticed his big beard, and partikler noticed the ship on his breast. I asked one of the bluejackets who the chap was. 'Bloomin' slaver and cut-throat,' says he. 'We collared him off Bougainville in his cutter. He's the chap that shot over thirty niggers on San Christoval in cold blood two year ago, and we're taking him to Sydney to try and sheet it home to him.' So that's what I knows about Mr. Warner, sir. And he's hand and glove with the other chaps."
"Thank you very much for your confidence, Joe," said Barry. "I believe the man is an out-and-out villain, but I shall be on my guard now, more than ever."
Then once more they turned their attention to their quest.
A very brief inspection of the land in the vicinity of the little bay satisfied Barry that it would answer admirably for a station. All around were thousands upon thousands of coco-palms, and further back were some hundreds of huge jack fruit trees—a species of breadfruit bearing fruit of irregular shape, and containing large seeds. The brig could be moored within fifty yards of the beach so deep was the water, and fresh water for the ship's use could easily be had, Velo assured him, by sinking in the rich soil among the bread-fruit grove.