shaw. There's my hand on it!
Don't say a word. Maybe it is no more than I ought to do--perhaps not
half enough. Only remember, not a word of this to your daughter. She
must believe that I leave to-night. And the sooner you get her out of
this cursed ship the better."

"Deacon Flint's girls are goin' up in to-night's boat. I'll send Rosey
with them," said Nott, with a cunning twinkle. Renshaw nodded. Nott
seized his hand with a wink of unutterable significance.

Left to himself, Renshaw tried to review more calmly the circumstances
in these strange revelations that had impelled him to change his
resolution so suddenly. That the ship was under the surveillance of
unknown parties, and that the description of them tallied with his own
knowledge of a certain Lascar sailor, who was one of Sleight's
informants--seemed to be more than probable. That this seemed to point
to Sleight's disloyalty to himself while he was acting as his agent, or
a double treachery on the part of Sleight's informants, was in either
case a reason and an excuse for his own interference. But the
connection of the absurd Frenchman with the case, which at first seemed
a characteristic imbecility of his landlord, bewildered him the more he
thought of it. Rejecting any hypothesis of the girl's affection for the
antiquated figure whose sanity was a question of public criticism, he
was forced to the equally alarming theory that Ferrieres was cognizant
of the treasure, and that his attentions to Rosey were to gain
possession of it by marrying her. Might she not be dazzled by a picture
of this wealth? Was it not possible that she was already in part
possession of the secret, and her strange attraction to the ship, and
what he had deemed her innocent craving for information concerning it,
a consequence? Why had he not thought of this before? Perhaps she had
detected his purpose from the first, and had deliberately checkmated
him. The thought did not increase his complacency as Nott softly
returned:

"It's all right," he began with a certain satisfaction in this rare
opportunity for Machiavellian diplomacy, "it's all fixed now. Rosey
tumbled to it at once, partiklerly when I said you was bound to go.
'But wot makes Mr. Renshaw go, father,' sez she; 'wot makes everybody
run away from the ship?' sez she, rather peart-like and sassy for her.
'Mr. Renshaw hez contractin' business,' sez I; 'got a big thing up in
Sacramento that'll make his fortun','sez I--for I was