ding. You've heard enough. I'm blind. I've bin done dirt
once aboard the _Karluk_, and I don't aim to stand for it ag'in. And I
had my eyes, then. No use livin' in a rumpus. Got to keep watch. Got to
keep yore eyes open.

"And I ain't got eyes. You have. Use 'em for both of us. I ain't asking
ye to take sides, exactly. But I've got cause for bein' suspicious. I
don't call the skipper _Honest_ Simms no more. And I ain't stuck on that
doctor. He's too bossy. He's got the skipper under his thumb. And
there's somethin' funny about the skipper. Notice ennything?"

"Why, I don't know him," said Rainey. "He doesn't look extra well, what
I've seen of him. Only the once."

"He's logey," said Lund confidentially. "He ain't the same man. Mebbe
it's his conscience. But that doctor's runnin' him."

"He's going to marry the captain's daughter," said Rainey.

"Simms' daughter? Carlsen goin' to marry her? Ump! That may account for
the milk in the cocoanut. She's a stranger to me. Lived ashore with her
uncle and aunt, they tell me. Carlsen was the family doctor. Now she's
off with her father."

His face became crafty, and he reached out for Rainey's knee, found it
as readily as if he had sight, and tapped it for emphasis.

"That makes all the more reason for us lookin' out for things, matey,"
he went on, almost in a whisper. "If they've played me once they may do
it ag'in. And they've got the odds, settin' aside my eyes. But I can
turn a trick or two. You an' me come aboard together. You give me a
hand. Stick to me, an' I'll see you git yore whack.

"I'll have yore bunk changed. You'll come in with me. An' we'll put one
an' one together. We'll be mates. Treat 'em fair if they treat us fair.
But don't forget they fixed yore grog. I had nothin' to do with that. I
may be stranded, but, if the tide rises--"

He set the clutch of his powerful fingers deep into Rainey's leg above
the knee with a grip that left purple bruises there before the day was
over.

"We two, matey," he said. "Now you an' me'll have a tot of stuff that
ain't doped."

He moved about the little cabin with an astounding freedom and
sureness, chuckling as he handled bottle and glasses and measured out
the whisky and water.

"W'en yo're blind," he said, ramming his pipe full of black tobacco,
"they's other things comes to ye. I know the run of this ship,
blindfold, you might say. I c'ud go aloft in a pinch, or steer her. More
grog?"

But Rainey abstained aft