r's disquieting and inexplicable intervention in this
tragic affair, I decided upon concealing it from him.

"He asked me," replied Dirk Peters, "did I not remember Ned
Holt of the _Grampus_, and whether he had perished in the fight with
the mutineers or in the shipwreck; whether he was one of the men who
had been abandoned with Captain Barnard; in short, he asked me if I
could tell him how his brother died. Ah! how!"

No idea could be conveyed of the horror with which the half-breed
uttered words which revealed a profound loathing of himself.

"And what answer did you make to Martin Holt?"

"None, none!"

"You should have said that Ned Holt perished in the wreck of the
brig."

"I could not--understand me--I could not. The two brothers are
so like each other. In Martin Holt I seemed to see Ned Holt. I was
afraid, I got away from him."

The half-breed drew himself up with a sudden movement, and I sat
thinking, leaning my head on my hands. These tardy questions of
Holt's respecting his brother were put, I had no doubt whatsoever,
at the instigation of Hearne, but what was his motive, and was it at
the Falklands that he had discovered the secret of Dirk Peters? I
had not breathed a word on the subject to anymm. To the second
question no answer suggested itself; the first involved a serious
issue. Did the sealing-master merely desire to gratify his enmity
against Dirk Peters, the only one of the Falkland sailors who had
always taken the side of Captain Len Guy, and who had prevented the
seizure of the boat by Hearne and his companions? Did he hope, by
arousing the wrath and vengeance of Martin Holt, to detach the
sailing-master from his allegiance and induce him to become an
accomplice in Hearne's own designs? And, in fact, when it was a
question of sailing the boat in these seas, had he not imperative
need of Martin Holt, one of the best seamen of the _Halbrane_? A man
who would succeed where Hearne and his companions would fail, if
they had only themselves to depend on?

I became lost in this labyrinth of hypotheses, and it must be
admitted that its complications added largely to the troubles of an
already complicated position.

When I raised my eyes, Dirk Peters had disappeared; he had said what
he came to say, and he now knew that I had not betrayed his
confidence.

The customary precautions were taken for the night, no individual
being allowed to remain outside the camp, with the exception of the
half-br