"I think you are right, Mrs. Tracey. And here is my hand and solemn promise to do all in my power to retake the Mahina, for now I begin to suspect that your husband did indeed meet with foul play."
[1] A foli is a huge mussel, with an edge as keen as that of a razor.
CHAPTER VIII.
MRS. TRACEY TELLS HER STRANGE STORY.
Mrs. Tracey listened with the most intense interest to Barry's account of his first meeting with Captain Rawlings, of the strange, mysterious midnight sailing of the Mahina from Sydney Harbour, and of the story of her husband's suicide as related by the captain to his newly-engaged chief mate on the following day, when he came on deck and said that Tracey was dead.
"It may be that my poor husband did indeed take his own life," she said, "but I do not believe it."
"Yet why should they—Rawlings and the others—have spared him so long?" inquired Barry.
"Neither Barradas nor Rawlings were navigators," replied Mrs. Tracey quickly.
"Ah, I see," and the chief officer stroked his beard thoughtfully; "but yet, you see, Rawlings would have sailed without a navigator on board had he not met me on the wharf that night."