She was smiling very gratefully up into his unhappy, stubborn face.
"We'll go together, Rube," she said, "or not at all. And, even although it does seem hopeless, I know you wouldn't want me to break my promise. So you get the boat launched while I go and tell Mr. Brasse."
She turned and ran lightly down the steps and along the main-deck, leaving the mate, sorely perturbed and uncertain, to carry out her instructions or not, as he chose. As she reached the engine-room skylight on the quarter-deck an unobtrusive shadow emerged from it and would have passed her with a nod on its way toward the bridge.
"Mr. Brasse," she said appealingly, and it halted to peer at her through a single eye-glass, after touching its cap in a very precise salute.
"Miss Sallie?" it answered in a surprised but courteous tone which told that the speaker was, or had once been, a gentleman.
"I'm going ashore," she went on in a hurry, "and Mr. Yoxall is going with me. Will you look after things for him until we get back? Every one else has gone already."
"I have Captain Dove's orders to be on the bridge—for another purpose," the chief engineer of the Olive Branch informed her, "and I'll do my best, of course, to make sure that nothing goes wrong in the chief mate's absence. But—is it safe for you—"
"Quite safe," she assured him. "And—Mr. Brasse, if I bring—I'm going ashore to try to save a man—a white man the Arabs mean to murder to-night. If I manage to bring him on board, will you help me to hide him?—so that Captain Dove won't know?"
The chief engineer of the Olive Branch was obviously much perplexed. But he was also obviously much better disposed toward Sallie than to Captain Dove.
"If he's willing to work in the stokehold," he stipulated, "I don't think Captain Dove would ever know he's on board the ship. And then he can slip ashore at the first safe port we manage to make."