.

I confess that I suspected some game, and that Meeker had waylaid me. It
looked like a bold move to block me at the last minute, and I was rather
amused at the idea of watching their game and seeing what might be the
tactics.

The little fellow had changed his appearance a trifle. His red head was
covered now with a black cloth cap, making him look more like a stoker
than a seaman. His ratlike visage was covered with a coppery stubble, but
its colour was not apparent at first glance, for his face was smeared
with coal-dust and grease.

"I'm nigh dead for a drink," he whined. "Let me take your luggage aboard,
sir--just a peseta, sir. I've had jungle fever and was shipwrecked--in
the _H.B. Leeds_ it was that went down in a typhoon. I can't get a ship
out of this blasted place. I'm an honest sailor if some hard on the
drink--just a peseta, sir, and I'll put your dunnage down in your cabin
slick as a whistle."

"I have a mind to turn you over to the police," I told him, expecting him
to take alarm and run away, for I was not so sure he had not had a hand
in the murder of the sailor in the Flagship Bar.

The _cochero_ had pulled up his horse on the mole in the thick of the
scattered cargo, and Petrak still clung to the stanchion supporting the
canvas-top of the carriage.

"And for why?" he demanded with a touch of arrogance, giving me a shrewd
look. "What have I been doin' of, sir?"

"That little cutting in the Flagship Bar."

"The squarehead? Not me, sir. The bobbies got that chap right enough--one
of his mates out of this wessel right alongside what you're goin' aboard
of. Just a peseta, sir, and I'll handle your luggage."

"They have got the fellow who stabbed the man in the Flagship Bar?"

"Slick as a whistle, some two hours back. One of his mates, he was, that
did the cuttin'--lampman out of this wessel. Take your luggage."

"Take it along, then, and see that you don't drop it," I told him,
convinced that the little villain could have had no hand in the murder,
even if he had been on the scene.

He shouldered my bag and went up the gangway and I followed him closely.
I looked in at the door of the saloon where I saw the old captain seated
at the table, with a litter of papers about him, arguing with a tall
rawboned New Englander, whom I knew to be the mate. He was complaining
about something.

"I say we ain't goin' to git out to-night, Cap'n Riggs," he said. "The
bo'sun has went and got hisself stabbe