Rajah leaped out of his bunk, and, after looking around for a minute in confusion at his strange quarters, drank the water we had saved for him in the pannikin, and then put his face to a port-hole and surveyed the land.

I took the lead up the companion with the pistol ready, hoping that one of the pirates might be close to the tiny slit I had cut in the board and would offer a target.  I applied my eye to the hole.

The Rev. Luther Meeker, still in his suit of duck and pongee shirt and battered pith helmet, just as I had seen him on the mole in Manila, was pacing the bridge in the calm, commanding way that marks the man accustomed to command.  He was puffing contentedly at a cigar, and there was something amusing in the manner in which he cocked his head to one side to survey the sea and then the land with a critical eye.

From side to side he tramped, swinging on his heel at each end of the bridge like a grenadier sentry, and giving Petrak, who had the wheel, a stern look as he passed.  Buckrow was at the port end of the bridge, with a glass to his eyes scanning the rim of the sea; but Meeker, or Thirkle, kept aloof from his men, and he might well have been an admiral on the bridge of his flagship—­the Devil’s Admiral, indeed!

“Take a look at them,” I whispered to Riggs, and made way for him at the scuttle peephole.

“Blast him!” raged Riggs as he saw the scene on the bridge.  “I never thought I would live to see the like of that!”

“But how does he keep her engines going?  The fireroom crew must know what has happened,” I said.

“What’s left of ’em do,” said Riggs.  “He’s likely got a few men below who think they will get a share of the loot if they keep up steam.  Perhaps the Filipino chief is at his post keeping the chinkies going—­leave that to the devil on the bridge—­he knows his game.”

He drew back into the companion, and I looked out again.  I could see a pair of shoes sticking out past the donkey-engine, just abaft the foremast; but the machinery hid the man from me.  Presently a strip of canvas fluttered in the breeze, and Long Jim stood up, with a sail-needle and a length of sail-twine in his teeth, and cut out a square of tarpaulin on the deck.

“Look at the cockney,” I said to Riggs.  “I can’t make out what he is up to.”

He studied the sailor for a minute, and then drew back and whispered: 

“Sewing sacks to carry the gold away.  They are getting ready to scuttle her.  The starboard boats are hanging in the davits, ready to lower away when we are behind the island.  There is a channel a mile wide in there, and deep soundings.  He may find an anchorage until night and then get away in the dark, but I’m afraid he won’t take that long, because he knows a coast-guard cutter is liable to spy him out.  This coast is being watched pretty close by the navy and the Japs and the customs, because there is so much blockade-running.”