, and curtly requested to be at
once put off to the barque. During the passage off to the vessel the
man's surliness of demeanour suddenly vanished, and, as though a
brilliant idea had just struck him, he became in a moment almost
offensively civil, strongly urging Dick to remain aboard the barque and
"make a night of it." But neither did this suit Dick's plans; the
sudden change in the man's demeanour at once roused Leslie's suspicions;
and as he had no intention whatever of placing himself in the fellow's
power, he suavely declined the invitation, remarking that, as he would
soon be having quite as much of the sea as he wanted, he would continue
to enjoy his present roomy quarters as long as he could.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A STORY OF MUTINY.

Not until Leslie was once more back in his own tent, and absolutely safe
from all possibility of interruption or espionage, did he venture to
open and peruse the scrap of paper that the steward had that morning so
surreptitiously slipped into his hand. It was apparently part of the
leaf of a pocket memorandum book; and, hastily scribbled in pencil, in
an ill-formed and uneducated hand, it bore the following words:--

"Sir, for God's sake take care what your about, or your life won't be
worth a brass farden. Turnbull aint no more the proper capten of this
ship than I am. There won't be no anchor watch aboard here to-night so
if youl come off about half after midnight I'll be on the lookout for
yer and tell yer the hole bloomin yarn. For God's sake come.--Steward."

"Um!" meditated Leslie, as he held the document to the light of the
lamp. "Now, what does this mean? Is it a trap to get me aboard the
barque, or is it genuine? The latter, I am inclined to think, for
several reasons; the first of which is that the poor man was obviously
in a state of abject terror this morning. Secondly, he was so keenly
anxious to open up communication with me that he made an unsuccessful
attempt to do so while helping me to my whisky and soda. Thirdly, his
statement that Turnbull is not the legitimate skipper of the barque is
so evidently true that it needs no discussion. And fourthly, if
Turnbull had seriously desired to make me a prisoner this afternoon, he
could easily have done so by sending a boat's crew in pursuit of me--
that is to say," he corrected himself, "for all he knows to the
contrary, he could easily have done so. For how was he to know that I
had two fully loaded r