Page:Last Cruise of the Spitfire.djvu/162

152 "There ain't any other boat," he went on. "There used to be, but it got stove to pieces."

"I can do but little with my hands chained together," said I. "Do you know where the key to this pair of handcuffs is?"

"On a nail in the cabin. I saw Captain Hannock put it there."

"Come, show me."

I ran into the cabin, Jones following. Here all was confusion, as if the inmates had been forced to leave in a great hurry. The captain of the Spitfire had left nothing undone to make the loss of the schooner appear purely accidental.

"Here is the key," said Phil, producing it. "Let me take them off.

In a moment he had the handcuffs loose, and I slipped them off.

"They should be on Captain Hannock," I remarked, as we hurried on deck.

"Indeed they should," replied the cabin boy, though he did not fully understand me. "I was dead tired, and went to sleep on the pantry floor, and no one came near me to wake me up. I suppose the old man would just as soon see me dead as alive."

"I, too, was left alone," I replied. "Captain