Chapter XXV: Including a Cross-Examination

Falk tried, I was certain, to conceal a smile of joy at Roger's simplicity, and I saw that others in the boat were averting their faces. Also I saw that they were shifting their weapons to have them more readily available.

Our own men, on the contrary, were remonstrating audibly, and to my lasting shame I joined them.

A queer expression appeared on Roger's face and he looked at us as if incredulous. I suddenly perceived that our rebellious attitude hurt him bitterly. He had led us so bravely through all our recent difficulties! And now, when success seemed assured, we manifested in return doubt and disloyalty! I literally hung my head. The others were abashed and silent, but I knew that my own defection was more contemptible by far than theirs, and had Roger reproached me sharply, I might have felt better for it. Instead, he spoke without haste or anger in a voice pitched so low that Falk could not possibly overhear him.

"We simply _have_ to hold together, men. All to the gangway, now, and stand by for orders."

That was all he said, but it was enough. Thoroughly ashamed of ourselves, we followed him to the gangway whither the boat was coming slowly.

Roger assumed an air of neutral welcome as he reached for the bow of the pinnace; but to us behind him he whispered sharply, "Stand ready, all hands, with muskets and pikes."

"Now, then, Captain Falk," he cried, "hand over the money first. We'll stow it safe on board."

"Come, come," Falk replied. "Belay that talk." He was standing ready to climb on deck.

"The money first," said Roger coolly.

Suddenly he tried to hook the bow of the pinnace, but missed it as the pinnace dipped in the trough.

The rest of us, waiting breathlessly, for the first time comprehended Roger's strategy.

Falk looked up at him angrily. "That'll get you nowhere," he retorted. "Come, stand away, or so help me, I'll see you hanged anyhow."

Roger smiled at him coldly. "The word of a gentleman? The money first, Captain Falk."

"Well, if you are so stupid that you haven't discovered the truth yet, I haven't the money."

"Where is the money?"

"In the safe in the cabin, as you very well know," replied Falk.

"You lie!" Roger responded.

With a ripping oath, Captain Falk whipped out his pistol.

"You lie!" Roger cried again, hotly. "Put down that pistol or I'll blow you to hell. Stand by, boys. We'll show them!"

Though we were fewer than they, we had them at a tremendous disadvantage, for we were protected by the bulwarks and could pour our musket-fire into the open boat at will, and in a battle of cutlasses and pikes our advantage would be even greater.

"Don't a flag of truce give us no protection?" Kipping asked in that accursedly mild voice--I could not hear it without thinking of poor Bill Hayden, and to the others, they told me later, it brought the same bitter memory.

"How long since Cap'n Falk's ol' unde' shirt done be a p'tection?" muttered the cook grimly.

"Yes, laugh! Laugh, you black baboon! Laugh, you silly little fool, Lathrop!" Falk yelled. "I'll have you laughing another time one of these days. Give way men! We'll have out their haslets yet."

A hundred feet from the ship, the men rested on their oars, and Falk put on a very different manner. "Roger Hamlin," he cried, "you ain't going to send us away, are you?"

I was astounded. As long as I had known Falk, I had never realized how many different faces the man could assume at the shortest notice. But Roger seemed not at all surprised. "Yes," he said, shortly, "we're going to send you away, you black-hearted scoundrel."

"Good God! We'll perish!"

Although obvious retorts were many, Roger made no reply.

Now Kipping spoke up mildly and innocently:--

"What'll we do? We can't land--the Malays was waiting for us on shore with knives, all ready to cut our throats. We can't go to sea like this. What'll we do?"

"Supposing," cried old Blodgett, sarcastically, "supposing you row back to Salem. It's only three thousand miles or more. You'll find it a pleasant voyage, I'm sure, and you'd ought to run into enough Ladronesers and Malays to make it interesting along the way."

"Ain't we human?" Kipping whined, as if trying to wring pity from even Blodgett. "Ain't you going at least to give us a keg o' water and some bread?"

"If you're not out of gunshot in five minutes," Roger cried, "I'll train the long gun and blow you clean out of water."

Without more ado they rowed slowly away, growing smaller and smaller, until at last they passed out of sight round the point.

"Ah me," sighed Neddie Benson, "I'm glad they're gone. It's funny Falk ain't quite a light man nor yet a real dark man."

"_Gone_!" Davie repeated ominously. "_I_ wish they was gone." He looked up at the furled sails. "They ain't--and neither is we."

"There's work to be done," said Roger, "and we must be about it. Leave the nets as they are. Stack the muskets in the waist, pile the pikes handy by the deckhouse, and all lay aft. We'd best have a few words together before we begin."

A moment later, as I was busy with the pikes, Roger came to me and murmured, "There's something wrong afoot. The after-hatch has been pried off."

I noticed the hatch once more the next time I passed it, and I remembered seeing the man from Boston emerge from the hold. But there was so much else to be attended to that it was a long, long time before I thought of it again.

When we had done as Roger told us, we gathered round him where he waited, leaning against the cabin, with his hands in his pockets.

"We're all in the same boat together, men," he began. "We knew what the chances were when we took them. If you wish to have it so, in the eyes of the law we're pirates and mutineers, and since Falk seems to have got away with what money there was on board, things may go hard with us. _But_--" he spoke the word with stern emphasis--"_but_ we've acted for the best, and I think there's no one here wants to try to square things up by putting Falk in command again. How about it?"

"Square things up, is it?" cried Blodgett. "The dirty villain would have us hanged at the nearest gallows for all his buttery words."

"Exactly!" Roger threw back his head. "And when we get to Salem, I can promise you there's no man here but will be better off for doing as he's done so far."

"But whar's all dat money gone?" the cook demanded unexpectedly.

"I don't know," said Roger.

"What! Ain' dat yeh money heah?"

"No."

At that moment my eye chanced to fall on the man from Boston, who was looking off at the island as if he had no interest whatever in our conversation. The circumstances under which he had stayed with us were so strange and his present preoccupation was so carefully assumed, that I was suddenly exceedingly suspicious of him, although when I came to examine the matter closely, I could find no very definite grounds for it.

Blodgett was watching him, too, and I think that Roger followed our gaze for suddenly he cried, "You there!" in a voice that brought the man from Boston to his feet like the snap of a whip.

"Yes, sir! Yes, sir!" he replied briskly.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Roger demanded. The fellow, who had begun to assume as many airs and as much self-confidence as if he had been one of our own party from the very first, was sadly disconcerted. "Why I come over to your side first chance I had," he replied with an aggrieved air.

"What were you doing in the cabin when the natives were running all over the ship?"

The five of us, startled by the quick, sharp questions, looked keenly at the man from Boston. But he, recovering his self-possession, replied coolly enough, "I was just a-keeping watch so they wouldn't steal--I kept them from running off with the quadrant."

"Keeping watch so _nobody'd_ steal, I suppose," said Roger.

"Yes, sir! Yes, sir! That's it exactly."

Suddenly my mind leaped back to the night when Bill Hayden had died, and the man from Boston had made that cryptic remark, to which I called attention long since. "He said he could tell something, Roger," I burst out. But Roger silenced me with a glance.

Turning on the fellow again, he said, "If I find that you are lying to me, I'll shoot you where you stand. What do you know about who killed Captain Whidden?"

For once the fellow was taken completely off his guard. He glanced around as if he wished to run away, but there was no escape. He saw only hostile faces.

"What do you know about who killed Captain Whidden?"

"Mr. Kipping killed him," the fellow gasped, startled out of whatever reticence he may have intended to maintain. "Yes, sir! Yes, sir!"

"Do you expect me to believe that Kipping shot the captain? If you lie to me--" Roger drew his pistol. By eyes and voice he held the man in a hypnosis of terror.

"He did! I swear he did. Don't shoot me, sir! I'm telling you the very gospel truth. He cursed awful and said--don't point that pistol at me, sir! I swear I'll tell the truth!--'Mr. Thomas is as good as done for,' he said. 'There's only one man between us and a hundred thousand dollars in gold.' And Falk--Kipping was talking to Falk low-like and didn't know I was anywhere about--and Falk says, 'No, that's too much.' Then he says, wild-like, 'Shoot--go on and shoot.' Then Kipping laughs and says, 'So you've got a little gumption, have you?' and he shot Captain Whidden and killed him. Don't point that pistol at _me_, sir! I didn't do it."

Roger had managed the situation well. His sudden and entirely unexpected attack had got from the man a story that a month of ordinary cross-examinations might not have elicited; for although the fellow had volunteered to tell all he knew, his manner convinced me that under other circumstances he would have told no more than he had to. Also he had admitted being in the cabin while the natives were roaming over the ship!