“Sorry, Alec. I’ve promised to keep mum. Suppose we leave it at that.”
“What is there to keep mum about?”
“Hanged if I can tell you, though you yourself haven’t been what you might call bursting with information during the past month.”
“It was a woman’s secret, C. K.”
“And that’s just how I size it up at this sitting.”
Sturgess’s logic was unanswerable, but Maseden was in high dudgeon as he strode back to the camp-fire. He was far more angry with Nina than with Madge. He suspected that Madge simply followed her sister’s instructions, and the injustice of this steady refusal of confidence was aggravated by the fact that Sturgess seemed to know more about the ins and outs of the affair now than he did.
True, the New Yorker said he was still in ignorance of the motive which led up to the marriage, yet he had hinted at the possession of knowledge withheld from the man who had saved their lives not once but a dozen times. Nina was to blame. Maseden was certain of that. He would have liked to shake her.
As it happened, she was either sound asleep or pretending it, so he, too, curled up in the sand and slept till long after dawn.
The new day began with an unexpected difficulty. The Indian girl was cheerful as a grig during breakfast. She ascertained their names, which she pronounced fairly well. “Nina” she had no trouble with. “Madge” she made into “Mad-je.” Maseden was “Ah-lek,” and Sturgess “See-ke.” Her own name had a barbarous sound, if, indeed, it was a name at all; so Madge christened her “Topsy,” which seemed to please her. But her light-heartedness vanished when she saw preparations being made to renew the voyage. She protested volubly, pointed to a colony of seals and well-filled beds of oysters, and generally implied an earnest desire to remain on the island.
Eastward, it would appear, were other “bad men” and “much smoke,” but, whatsoever her motive, Maseden sternly overruled her. She was greatly distressed when placed on board the boat, and sulked for a couple of hours. As the coast drew near, however, she evinced renewed anxiety, and signified that she would act as pilot again.