I closed it again and debated for a minute what I should do, and, deciding that anything could not be worse than lying idle in a cell, made up my mind to venture out and call upon Captain Riggs if I could find him, or do a little spying on my own account to learn of any new development since I had been dismissed from the saloon and imprisoned.

I held the door open a few inches for several minutes and listened for some suspicious sound in the dark passageway.  I remembered that Harris had said something about a guard at the door, but although I strained my eyes, in the darkness I could see no one.  Each end of the passage was capped by a penumbra of dim light, for although the sky was overcast, the open air was not so dark as the intensified gloom of the passage.

My courage grew as I stood in the doorway, and I stepped out, closing the door silently and not locking it, but knotting the key in the string of my pajamas.

I listened for a minute at Meeker’s door but heard nothing.  His room was next to mine, but further aft, with one or more doors between his and where the passage gave on the open after-deck, Captain Rigg’s room was on the same side, but away forward, under the end of the bridge, close to the open ladder which led down to the fore-deck.

In my bare feet I made no noise, and slowly made my way forward to see if there was a light in Captain Riggs’s room.  Before I had gone far I heard a murmur of voices, and then saw a sliver of light from the jamb of a door.  There was a conversation going on in the captain’s room, but I could not distinguish the voices.  I went on to the forward end of the superstructure and discovered a port-hole in the captain’s cabin partly open, and by going up three steps of the bridge-ladder I had a partial view of the room.

Captain Riggs was fully dressed, and sat at a shelf which dropped from the wall.  He was sorting out papers, and Harris, the mate, was standing over him, talking.

“You must be mistaken, Mr. Harris,” I heard the captain say.

“Make me third cook if I be!” exclaimed Harris, who seemed to be in an irritable mood.  “I know what I’m talking about, cap’n!  I run my thumbnail along the edges of it.”

“Sally Ann’s black cat, Mr. Harris!”

“All I ask ye to do, cap’n, is come down and have a look at it for yerself.  That’s what this is all about I’m tellin’ ye!  We got somethin’ on our hands, I tell ye!  We’ve got to do somethin’ about it right away or we’ll have more trouble.  What if the crew smells a rat?”

“You got a little too excited about that murder, Mr. Harris.  I’d know all about that.  The owners wouldn’t send me to sea with such as you say, and say nothing to me, nor the charter party, either.  They’d use a liner and about forty men for anything like that.  I’m crazy enough now, what with this murder and mess, without getting myself stirred up over anything like that.  You better get some sleep.  We’ll find in the morning that you made a mistake.”