"You'll provoke suspicion if you do that," I exclaimed. "However, you can act as you please."
"Mr. Royle's quite right," said the man addressed as Joe. "Why can't you leave him alone? He knows more about it than us, mates."
"She's going twelve knots," I said, "and will cross our bows soon enough. Let her signal, we're not bound to answer."
The men, in spite of themselves, watched her anxiously, and so did others on the forecastle, such cowards does conscience make of men. As for myself, I gazed at her with bitter indifference. The help that I stood in need of was not likely to come from such as she, or indeed from any vessel short of an inquisitive Government ship. Moreover, the part I was playing was too difficult to permit me to allow any impulse to inspire. The smallest distrust that I should occasion might cost me my life. My rôle then surely was to seem one with the men, heart and soul.
"Let her go off a point," I exclaimed to the man steering. "They'll not notice that, and she'll be across us the sooner for it."
We were slipping through the water quickly, and by the time she was on our weather bow the steamer was near enough to enable us to see the awning stretched over her after-deck, and a crowd of persons watching us. She was a great ocean steamer, and went magnificently through the water. In a few minutes she was dead on end, dwindling the people watching us, but leaving such a long wake astern of her that we went over it.
What would I have given to be on board of her!
"Let her come to again!" I sang out.
The carpenter now got off the skylight.
"I've told the steward to turn to and get the men's breakfast," said he. "Ourn's to be ready by eight; and I reckon I'll show that snivelling cockney what it is to be hungry. You don't call this a mutiny, do yer, Mr. Royle? Why, the men are like lambs."