Jim Adams, mysteriously beckoning him to follow, retreated across the deck, to the side of the after-house.
“Mister Haley,” he said, softly, “I got something to say to you. I know what you come in here for now. There don’t no wood grow hereabouts. You thinks this would be a mighty fine place to leave that youngster that came from the Patuxent. But I ain’t goin’ to let you do it, Mister Haley—leastways not yet. I reckon Jim Adams wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for that youngster hauling him back aboard when he came out of the Nanticoke.”
Haley, taken utterly by surprise, glared at the mate for one moment without being able to find words to reply. Then he cried out that he would knock him overboard, and raised his fist for a blow. The agile mate caught his wrist and held it in a grip that Haley could not shake off. They struggled for a moment, and then Haley, breaking loose, stood, trembling with rage.
“Jim Adams,” he said, huskily, “what ails you—have you gone crazy? You’ve always been a good mate. Don’t be a fool now. Don’t you know the boy’s a danger to us, here? Do you want to go to jail on account of him?”
“Sho’ no, I don’t at all, Cap’n Haley,” answered the mate, with assurance. “See here,”—and he assumed a more civil, urgent tone,—“I want to get clear of that young chap just as bad as you do, Mister Haley; but I jes’ don’t like to see him go ashore now, cause there ain’t nothin’ but ma’sh land hereabouts, and I know he’d starve to death, or drown. And I reckon Jim Adams owes him that much, to see as he’s put ashore where he can get away, somehow. That’s all I want. Wait till we get down into Virginny, Mister Haley, and I won’t make no trouble—but I guess you and I will fight pretty bad if he has to go here.”
The mate’s manner was both threatening and wheedling. Clearly, he had no fear of Haley. It was man against man. Haley waited some moments, eying the mate as if to read his mind. Evidently what he saw, in the snapping eyes that returned his gaze, convinced him that Jim Adams was not to be turned aside without a struggle.
“All right,” he said, “but I’ll get square for it. Let your anchor go. Come aboard here, you men. We’ll get our wood down yonder. Drop those sails and turn in.”
Sullenly, leaving the mate to make all snug, Haley went below. Jim Adams, turning his eyes upon Henry Burns as the boy slipped down into the forecastle, muttered softly to himself. He had a queer kind of cold-blooded logic, had Jim Adams.
“There,” he said, “you and I am square, young fellow. You saved my life, and now I’ve saved yours. That makes us even, I reckon. The next time, I guess you’ll have to go ashore.”
Into this bay and out again, the course of the Brandt now continued, as the sloop Mollie traced it later. A vessel that passed here and there, despite Haley’s precautions, sufficed to give the clues he fain would have hid. There is fate in all things, and it was Haley’s now to leave an open trail where he sought concealment. He ran to Smith Island, and the Mollie got trace of him there. He sailed southward, and the Virginia line was not so many miles away. Of an evening, as darkness was shutting down, he perceived far astern a sloop coming in his wake. He noticed it, but gave it little thought. He had one other idea in his mind, and that overshadowed all else. The boy that was a peril to him must be gotten rid of.