"Let me get it for you," I said. To my amazement, she put her foot over it.
"Please see what Mr. Turner is doing," she said. "It is the key to my jewel-case."
"Will you let me see it?"
"No."
"It is not the key to a jewel-case."
"It does not concern you what it is."
"It is the key to the storeroom door."
"You are stronger than I am. You look the brute. You can knock me away and get it."
I knew then, of course, that it was the storeroom key. But I could not take it by force. And so defiantly she faced me, so valiant was every line of her slight figure, that I was ashamed of my impulse to push her aside and take it. I loved her with every inch of my overgrown body, and I did the thing she knew I would do. I bowed and left the cabin. But I had no intention of losing the key. I could not take it by force, but she knew as well as I did what finding it there in Turner's room meant. Turner had locked me in. But I must be able to prove it—my wits against hers, and the advantage mine. I had the women under guard.
I went up on deck.
A curious spectacle revealed itself. Turner, purple with anger, was haranguing the men, who stood amidships, huddled together, but grim and determined withal. Burns, a little apart from the rest, was standing, sullen, his arms folded. As Turner ceased, he took a step forward.
"You are right, Mr. Turner," he said. "It's your ship, and it's up to you to say where she goes and how she goes, sir. But some one will hang for this, Mr. Turner,—some one that's on this deck now; and the bodies are going back with us—likewise the axe. There ain't going to be a mistake—the right man is going to swing."
"That's mutiny!"
"Yes, sir," Burns acknowledged, his face paling a little. "I guess you could call it that."
Turner swung on his heel and went below, where Jones, relieved of guard duty by Burns, reported him locked in his room, refusing admission to his wife and Miss Lee, both of whom had knocked on the door.
The trouble with Turner added to the general misery of the situation. Burns got our position at noon with more or less exactness, and the general working of the Ella went on well enough. But the situation was indescribable. Men started if a penknife dropped, and swore if a sail flapped. The call of the boatswain's pipe rasped their ears, and the preparation for stowing the bodies in the jolly-boat left them unnerved and sick. Some sort of a meal was cooked, but no one could eat; Williams brought up, untasted, the luncheon he had carried down to the after house.
At two o'clock all hands gathered amidships, and the bodies were carried forward to where the boat, lowered in its davits and braced, lay on the deck. It had been lined with canvas and tarpaulin, and a cover of similar material lay ready to be nailed in place. All the men were bareheaded. Many were in tears. Miss Lee came forward with us, and it was from her prayer-book that I, too moved for self-consciousness, read the burial-service.
"I am the resurrection and the life," I read huskily.
The figures at my feet, in their canvas shrouds, rolled gently with the rocking of the ship; the sun beat down on the decks, on the bare heads of the men, on the gilt edges of the prayer-book, gleaming in the light, on the last of the land-birds, drooping in the heat on the main cross-trees.
"... For man walketh in a vain shadow," I read, "and disquieteth himself in vain....
"O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen."
CHAPTER XI
THE DEAD LINE
Mrs. Johns and the stewardess came up late in the afternoon. We had railed off a part of the deck around the forward companionway for them, and none of the crew except the man on guard was allowed inside the ropes. After a consultation, finding the ship very short-handed, and unwilling with the night coming on to trust any of the men, Burns and I decided to take over this duty ourselves, and, by stationing ourselves at the top of the companionway, to combine the duties of officer on watch and guard of the after house. To make the women doubly secure, we had Oleson nail all the windows closed, although they were merely portholes. Jones was no longer on guard below, and I had exchanged Singleton's worthless revolver for my own serviceable one.
Mrs. Johns, carefully dressed, surveyed the railed-off deck with raised eyebrows.
"For—us?" she asked, looking at me. The men were gathered about the wheel aft, and were out of ear-shot. Mrs. Sloane had dropped into a steamer-chair, and was lying back with closed eyes.
"Yes, Mrs. Johns."
"Where have you put them?"
I pointed to where the jolly-boat, on the port side of the ship, swung on its davits.
"And the mate, Mr. Singleton?"
"He is in the forward house."
"What did you do with the—the weapon?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"Morbid curiosity," she said, with a lightness of tone that rang false to my ears. "And then—naturally, I should like to be sure that it is safely overboard, so it will not be"—she shivered—"used again."
"It is not overboard, Mrs. Johns," I said gravely. "It is locked in a safe place, where it will remain until the police come to take it."
"You are rather theatrical, aren't you?" she scoffed, and turned away. But a second later she came back to me, and put her hand on my arm. "Tell me where it is," she begged. "You are making a mystery of it, and I detest mysteries."
I saw under her mask of lightness then: she wanted desperately to know where the axe was. Her eyes fell, under my gaze.
"I am sorry. There is no mystery. It is simply locked away for safe-keeping."
She bit her lip.
"Do you know what I think?" she said slowly. "I think you have hypnotized the crew, as you did me—at first. Why has no one remembered that you were in the after house last night, that you found poor Wilmer Vail, that you raised the alarm, that you discovered the captain and Karen? Why should I not call the men here and remind them of all that?"
