"I'll be berry car'fu', sir."
"A single hint from you might lead to you and me being hanged by the neck until we are dead. On the other hand, if you keep silent, I will take care that you are rewarded; and if you have had enough of the sea, I dare say the friends of the lady will find you some comfortable berth ashore."
The lad's black face was somewhat complicated by expression. There was mingled fright and delight in his wide grin and the stare of his large, bland, dusky African eyes.
"Mind!" said I.
And here let me own that my desire that the murder of the Spaniard should be kept a profound secret was largely—indeed almost wholly—a selfish one. For, first, I never doubted that, if the girl came to hear of what she had done, the thought of it working in a brain still weak with recent craziness would render her incurably mad, and so immeasurably increase my present anxieties and the trouble I should be put to to carry her home. Next, I wished the dreadful deed kept secret, since this singular expedition having caused me trouble and grief enough already upon the high seas, I was by no means anxious that darker worries should grow out of it on my arrival on shore.
I saw nothing of the lady that evening, nor, indeed, throughout the night. Two or three times I knocked upon her door to inquire if she needed anything, and once only she answered. Her reply satisfied me that her mind was hers again; that, in short, there had been no relapse since I had left her. However, to provide against all risk, I arranged that the seamen should keep a look-out in the cabin as heretofore.
I had charge of the deck from four till eight. It blew continually a fine breeze of wind, and hour after hour the schooner swept through it as though driven by powerful engines. I guessed, if the vessel maintained her present rate of sailing, that the men would be enabled to leave me before forty-eight hours had passed. Daybreak showed us several ships on the sea line. They were all of them small vessels, and standing, with the exception of one, to the north. The man Scott, who was at the helm, said that it was a pity his mates could not see their way to transshipping themselves aboard a craft, instead of making for Cadiz in the cutter.
"Why don't you stop with me?" said I.
"No, no!" he exclaimed.