Wisner, the busy, efficient little consul, who had been arranging with the officials for Carroll’s embarkation, now returned, bringing with him a viking of a man whom he introduced as Dr. Stark, of the United States Public Health Service.
“Either of you know anything about Dr. Pruyn?” he inquired anxiously.
“He’s on his way down the mountain now,” said Carroll.
“Good! He’s ordered away, I’m glad to say. Just got the message.”
“Then perhaps he will go out with us,” said Cluff, with obvious relief. “I sure did hate to think of leaving that boy here, with the game laws for goggle-eyed Americans entirely suspended.”
“No. He’s ordered to Curaçao to stay and watch. We’ve got to get him out to the Dutch ship somehow.”
“Couldn’t the yacht take him and transfer him outside?” asked Carroll.
“Mr. Carroll,” said Dr. Stark earnestly, “before this yacht is many minutes out from the dock, you’ll see a yellow flag go up from the end of the corporation pier. After that, if the yacht turns aside or comes back for a package that some one has left, or does anything but hold the straightest course on the compass for the blue and open sea—well, she’ll be about the foolishest craft that ever ploughed salt water.”
“I suppose so,” admitted Carroll. “Well, I have matters to look after on board.”
Into Mr. Carroll’s cabin it is nobody’s business to follow him. A man has a right to some privacy of room and of mind, and if the Southerner’s struggle with himself was severe, at least it was of brief duration. Within half an hour, he was knocking at Polly Brewster’s door.