Captain Dove turned to Reuben Yoxall. "You'll stay on board," he whispered very brusquely, "in charge of the ship. I'll tell the chief engineer to lend you two or three men, and you'll see to it that they don't lay their hands on any more guns.
"You'll stick by me," he told Slyne, in the background, and Slyne merely shrugged his shoulders impatiently as the old man passed on to where Sallie was waiting to hear what her part was to be. She did not know in the least what to make of his newly-declared intentions.
"Am I to go with you?" she asked on the spur of the moment. And Captain Dove stared at her.
"No, you are not," he declared emphatically. "D'you want to be shot—or kidnapped—or what! Get away down below, girl, and stay there till I come aboard again. You must be mad!"
She turned obediently toward the companion-hatch, and stopped there. He went forward then, the men making way for him readily, and disappeared into the engine-room. When he climbed carefully back on deck through the fiddley-hatch in the skylight, he found all the boats afloat and only one boat's crew remaining on board, under charge of the second mate, Hobson, with the evident aim of making sure that he did not somehow give them the slip or otherwise take any advantage of them. In response to a shout from him, Jasper Slyne went jauntily forward, and, with commendable promptitude, let himself down the falls overside. One of these, unhooked, served Captain Dove for a sling, and he was soon seated at the boat's tiller. The men followed swiftly, and the second mate went last, no doubt satisfied by then that all would be well.
"Give way, lads!" cried Captain Dove to those at the sweeps, "and we'll show the others the short road ashore. I'm in no end of a hurry to get what's coming to me from that caravan."
Midnight lay very black on the bight where the Olive Branch was riding easily to a single anchor; as the dark hours sped they seemed to grow always darker. The boats which had just put off from her were almost instantly hidden from Sallie's sight. She stepped quietly out on deck beside Reuben Yoxall.
"Rube," she said in a low, determined voice. "I must be going too, now. Will you help me to get out the canvas boat?"
He stared at her, as Captain Dove had done, and swallowed down a lump in his throat.
"It's madness now!" he declared. "But—I'll go myself. You must stay where you are. It would be worse than madness for you—"