We were well clear of the congregation when I was startled to see Petrak emerge from the pack of staring natives about the organ, and run after my carriage.

“Take your luggage aboard for a peseta, sir!” he cried, grasping the side of the vehicle and keeping pace with it.

I confess that I suspected some game, and that Meeker had waylaid me.  It looked like a bold move to block me at the last minute, and I was rather amused at the idea of watching their game and seeing what might be the tactics.

The little fellow had changed his appearance a trifle.  His red head was covered now with a black cloth cap, making him look more like a stoker than a seaman.  His ratlike visage was covered with a coppery stubble, but its colour was not apparent at first glance, for his face was smeared with coal-dust and grease.

“I’m nigh dead for a drink,” he whined.  “Let me take your luggage aboard, sir—­just a peseta, sir.  I’ve had jungle fever and was shipwrecked—­in the H.B.  Leeds it was that went down in a typhoon.  I can’t get a ship out of this blasted place.  I’m an honest sailor if some hard on the drink—­just a peseta, sir, and I’ll put your dunnage down in your cabin slick as a whistle.”

“I have a mind to turn you over to the police,” I told him, expecting him to take alarm and run away, for I was not so sure he had not had a hand in the murder of the sailor in the Flagship Bar.

The cochero had pulled up his horse on the mole in the thick of the scattered cargo, and Petrak still clung to the stanchion supporting the canvas-top of the carriage.

“And for why?” he demanded with a touch of arrogance, giving me a shrewd look.  “What have I been doin’ of, sir?”

“That little cutting in the Flagship Bar.”

“The squarehead?  Not me, sir.  The bobbies got that chap right enough—­one of his mates out of this wessel right alongside what you’re goin’ aboard of.  Just a peseta, sir, and I’ll handle your luggage.”

“They have got the fellow who stabbed the man in the Flagship Bar?”

“Slick as a whistle, some two hours back.  One of his mates, he was, that did the cuttin’—­lampman out of this wessel.  Take your luggage.”

“Take it along, then, and see that you don’t drop it,” I told him, convinced that the little villain could have had no hand in the murder, even if he had been on the scene.

He shouldered my bag and went up the gangway and I followed him closely.  I looked in at the door of the saloon where I saw the old captain seated at the table, with a litter of papers about him, arguing with a tall rawboned New Englander, whom I knew to be the mate.  He was complaining about something.

“I say we ain’t goin’ to git out to-night, Cap’n Riggs,” he said.  “The bo’sun has went and got hisself stabbed and four of the white hands are missin’, and we ain’t got nobody to work ship but the chinks.”