Captain Parry went below, and returned on deck with the binocular which he had observed in Mr. Vanderholt's cabin. The main rigging of the Mowbray was rattled down to the height of the lower masthead. The captain got into the shrouds, and made his way to the crosstrees. Higher, being no sailor, he durst not crawl. With one hand he grasped a topmast shroud that was sweating tar; with the other he lifted the glasses, and searched the sea till his eyes swelled and throbbed in their sockets. When he descended he said to the mate:
'I have wondered why the men should have left the schooner afloat. Don't they usually scuttle vessels in affairs of this sort?'
'I heard the captain and the second officer talk this matter over,' said Mr. Blundell. 'The second mate thought that the villains knew what they were about when they left the schooner floating. She would be met with, and boarded. They'd find nothing to give them an idea of what had happened. So she'd be carried away to a port as a mystery, and that would be giving the men a better chance than had they scuttled her.'
'Why?'
'Always one of the men who've been concerned in bloody businesses of this sort finds his way to a hospital. He lies alongside another man and gabbles. The second mate seemed to think that if one of the men of this yacht turned up at a hospital and gabbled, less would be made of what he said if the schooner had been towed into port as a mystery than had she been sunk. For my part,' added Mr. Blundell, 'I believe they left her afloat because they couldn't find the heart to sink her. She is a beauty,' he murmured; and he whistled as he looked aloft and around.
'I take the second mate's view,' said Captain Parry.
He now made the tour of the schooner. He went forward and looked into the men's deck-house, then dropped into the little forecastle and peered round him. When he regained the deck, he saw a seaman climbing the fore-rigging, with a binocular glass slung over his shoulder. He watched him till the man had reached the royal yard, over which he threw his leg, with his back against the sun-bright mast. The seaman began to sweep the sea slowly and critically.
'Good God!' thought Captain Parry, with a sudden heart-leap, 'if the boat is afloat, or has not been picked up, we ought to fall in with her.'
The noise of the breeze was in his ears, a glad sense of motion came to him from the quick salt seething alongside. His heart leapt up; but in a minute all was dark again within him, with the horrible dread that Violet had been murdered by the men before they quitted the schooner.
The large, comfortable long-boat had been lifted out of its chocks, and was gone. Captain Parry noticed, however, that two good boats hung in the davits on either hand. He was impatient to learn the directions given by Captain Barrington, but Mr. Blundell was busy with the little ship's affairs just then. He had to appoint a cook, and see to the dinner; he had to arrange for a masthead look-out that should be brief under that broiling eye of day. They were few, and it taxed his genius as a sailor to make the most of them.