He made a soft salaaming bow, and quitted us with shining eyes and a highly pleased face. Presently the steward approached us with some cold salt beef, biscuit, and a bottle of wine. He spread a cloth upon the skylight, and then brought a couple of chairs from the cabin. While he was doing this I slipped into the mate's berth and took a tract-chart of the world from the bag and returned with it. I opened and pretended to examine it with anxious attention, speaking in an aside to Helga in a grumbling, doubting voice, and with a shake of my head, while Punmeamootty stood by waiting to learn if we had further orders. I told him we should require nothing more, and then, rolling up the chart, feigned to attack the repast before us. But as to eating!—not for ten times the value of this Light of the World and her cargo could I have swallowed a morsel. Helga munched a biscuit and drank a little wine, eyeing me collectedly, with often a smile when my glance went to her.

'What a heart beats in you!' I cried gently, for it was impossible to know but that some wriggling, nimble-heeled coloured skin had slipped into the cabin, and was hanging motionless close under us, with his ear at the skylight. 'But it is not too late even yet to reconsider. I can do without you.'

'Not so well as with me.'

'But if we fail——'

'We shan't fail.'

'If we fail,' I continued, 'they may spare you as not apparently in the plot, and they will spare you the more readily, and use you well too, since they must be helpless without you to navigate them.'

'Hush!' she whispered. 'The stratagem will be the surer for my presence. And what is the danger? There can be none if we manage as we have arranged.'

'When d'ye reckon on starting on this here job, Mr. Tregarthen?' called Jacob from the wheel.

I shook my fist as a hint to him to hold his tongue. I waited a few minutes, during which I pretended to be busy with my knife and fork. The yellow-faced cook stood in the galley door smoking: there were two fellows beyond him conversing close against the forecastle hatch. The rest of the seamen were below at their dinner. I now opened the chart; Helga came round to my side, and the pair of us fell to pointing and motioning with our hands over the chart as though we were warmly discussing a difficulty. I raised my voice and shook my head, exclaiming: 'No, no! Any sailor will tell you that the prevailing gales off Agulhas are from the east'ard;' and continued in this fashion, delivering meaningless sentences, always very noisily, and with a great deal of gesticulation, while Helga acted a like part. The three fellows forward watched us steadfastly.

Just then Abraham rose out of the forecastle hatch and approached the poop in a strolling, rolling gait, carelessly filling his pipe as he came, and sending the true 'longshore leisurely look at the sea from side to side. A couple of fellows followed him out of the hatch, entered the galley for a light, as I supposed, and emerged smoking. Helga and I still feigned to be wrangling. Then Abraham joined us, and after listening a minute or two, raised his voice with a wrangling note in it also.