"Hardly twenty-four hours since we came ashore," added the Skipper.
"Well, you remember when we went along the shore, don't you?" The Skipper nodded. "When we got to the place where the sailors were lying, there were three graves on the beach."
"Yes, what of that?"
"I want you to corroborate my statement, that is all. When I left the spot with the Bo's'n, you remember, when he was so afraid of the ring that your niece found——" The Skipper nodded again.
"Well, when I left that place with the Bo's'n there were two graves, another partly dug, and a dead Haïtien lying on the edge of it. When I went back there with you there were three graves, as I have said, and no Haïtien. How do you account for that?"
"Don't account for it at all," said the Captain.
"That's the way I account for it. The idee of your askin' me to account for anything in this devil's hole. If it was a little later in the day, and we were on board the old Yankee, I should say you had been looking at the sun through the bottom of a glass. About those graves now," continued the Skipper ruminatingly, "you remember what I said about a man in love, don't you?"
The old man looked at me with his eyes half closed and a peculiar expression of countenance.
"Leaving the strangeness of the completed burial aside," said I, "can you explain why there were only three graves when there were four men concerned in carrying off Lacelle?"
"I'm not good at guessing riddles," answered the old man. "Why should you care, anyway?"