Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/238

  he knew it; Lentz would no longer speak to him; the old fellow simply grunted when Deshay addressed him, as if he considered the captain a swine and able to understand the language. Claud did not hate him; he simply loathed him, and yet was dominated by him, and the same was true of Dixie. The air was heavily pregnant with possibilities, and, Doctor, when the denouement finally arrived it was as funny as the grin on the face of a corpse. Who do you suppose it was that pulled out the boat-plug? Why, none other than that black-browed humorist of a mate, who was, it seems, a murderer escaped from the Santa Clara county jail, and who had paid Deshay a good price for his billet.

"We were down in the neighborhood of Christmas Island, when we cut in close to some other little island; to this day I don't know what it was. Our course would trim it close, so at Deshay's suggestion we hove to and he and Lentz and Claud, Dixie and myself went in with two sailors to pull the boat. [ 222 ]