“No; there were six others directly behind him.”
“Six others!” exclaimed the detective. “Do you mean to tell me that seven men had succeeded in coming aboard your yacht, in the bright moonlight, when the Sound was as smooth as glass and the night was as still as a church, without rousing you, although you sat there on the deck smoking?”
“That is exactly what they did do.”
“How did they get aboard?”
“To answer that question now is to get ahead of my story,” said Kane. “I would rather tell you about it just as it happened, incident for incident.”
“All right. Go ahead.”
“You could have knocked me out with a crow’s feather when I discovered them,” continued Kane. “I hadn’t a leg left to stand on, Carter. I opened my mouth to speak—I haven’t the least idea what I intended to say, though—when the chief pirate raised one hand and touched his fingers to his lips.”
“Which you construed as a command for you to remain silent?”
“I think that gesture is so construed all over the world, isn’t it?”
“Quite so. Well, what next?”