along the edges of it."

"Sally Ann's black cat, Mr. Harris!"

"All I ask ye to do, cap'n, is come down and have a look at it for
yerself. That's what this is all about I'm tellin' ye! We got somethin'
on our hands, I tell ye! We've got to do somethin' about it right away
or we'll have more trouble. What if the crew smells a rat?"

"You got a little too excited about that murder, Mr. Harris. I'd know all
about that. The owners wouldn't send me to sea with such as you say, and
say nothing to me, nor the charter party, either. They'd use a liner and
about forty men for anything like that. I'm crazy enough now, what with
this murder and mess, without getting myself stirred up over anything
like that. You better get some sleep. We'll find in the morning that you
made a mistake."

"But I had a light on it!" insisted Harris. "It's thar, I tell ye, and I
made sure. I don't come botherin' of ye with no cock-and-bull story like
this unless I know. I held a bull's-eye light on it and it showed plain
as Cape Cod Light. One of them chists got sprung, and I thought maybe I'd
made a mistake when I put the light on it, but when I rubbed my thumbnail
on it I knew I was right. I know the feel, I tell ye. Every cussed one of
'em is the same, too."

"I tell you, Mr. Harris, I've had tomfoolery enough for one night, and
I ain't going down in the hold and dig around in cargo and get the crew
suspicious. They are stirred up enough as it is with what's gone on
to-night, and I guess that's what ails you."

"Cuss it all, Cap'n Riggs!" exclaimed Harris in exasperation. "Ye ought
to know I don't get gallied for a little blood spilled. I slep' in a bunk
all one night in the _Martha Pillsbury_ with a man what didn't have any
head and never turned a hair. Ye know that old barkentine whaler that
Cap'n Peabody sold. Dang it all, cap'n, that is what this man Trego come
aboard as he did--that's what he was here fer. It come down at the last
minute and he bossed the job of gettin' it aboard.

"Wouldn't let a man touch it, but had his own chinks from shore-side get
it aboard with slings from the davits, and watched 'em stow it in the
storeroom. It ain't in the hold. When I come across the key to the room I
made up my mind I'd have a look at it. Tinned milk! Marked tinned milk! I
say tinned milk hell! I wash my hands o' the whole cussed mess if ye
don't look at it and see for yerself.

"I don't want the responsibility, and we've got to take some pr