Chapter Fifty One.
Plot upon Plot.
The Condor is sailing barge, with a light breeze several points abaft the beam.
Jack Striker is at the wheel; and as the sea is smooth he finds it easy steering, having little to do but keep the barque steady by taking an occasional squint at the compass-card.
The moon—which has just risen—shining in his face, shows it to be that of a man over fifty, with the felon in its every line and lineament. It is beardless, pock-pitted, with thick shapeless lips, broad hanging jowls, nostrils agape, and nose flattened like the snout of a bull-dog. Eyes gosling-green, both bleary, one of them bloodshot. For all, eyes that, by his own boast, “can see into a millstone as far as the man who picks it.”
He has not been many minutes at his post when he sees some one approaching from the waist of the ship; a man, whom he makes out to be the first mate.
“Comin’ to con me,” growls the ex-convict. “Don’t want any o’ his connin’, not I. Jack Striker can keep a ship on her course well’s him, or any other board o’ this craft.”
He is on the starboard side of the wheel, while the mate is approaching along the port gangway. The latter, after springing up to the poop-deck, stops opposite the steersman, as he does so, saying: