Kane, himself, turned white and cold. In all his conjectures concerning the pirate—and he had had many while he was a prisoner below in his own cabin—he had never once thought of this.
True, he had wondered for a moment that Bessie was not sent to the cabin with them, but he really did not give the matter any particular thought; he had certainly not dreamed of such an answer to the question as the one he now received.
His wife did not faint. She reeled against the bulkhead, white and haggard, and with her face all pinched into lines of terror, which rendered her almost unrecognizable; and for a time she could only moan her sorrow.
“Poor Bessie!” she murmured. “Poor Bessie! Rather had we all been murdered in cold blood by that pirate fiend than that this should have happened.”
Presently she started, for a hand had fallen on her shoulder. The maids had come on deck and taken charge of her mother, and in her agony she had utterly forgotten her husband.
“You, Max?” she asked, without turning.
“Yes.”
“It is awful!” she murmured, with a shudder. “What shall we do, dear?”
“Bessie had my revolver in her hand,” said Max, irrelevantly.
“God grant that she will have the courage to use it!” moaned her sister.