“It may be that he is planning to maroon us on the island.”

“That wouldn’t be his way.  The Devil’s Admiral never leaves a man alive.  Four men will get out of the Kut Sang, and you know who they are.  He ain’t the man to take a chance of meeting you or me, or even letting us tell about him.  It’s ‘Dead men tell no tales’ with him, you may be sure of that.”

I took my turn at the little window, which was not wide enough to let the muzzle of my pistol through, or I would have fired upon them.  They each wore a pair of pistols, big, black, long-barrelled weapons.  Thirkle’s were quite plain, for he swung them from a belt over his white jacket, as I could see when he approached the openings at each end of the bridge where the ladder-heads ended.

“It will take about an hour at this clip to have the island abeam,” said Riggs, after he had gone below and looked through the ports.  “They are driving her again.  Likely he has an agreement with the black gang to stick to the fireroom; but whatever it is he won’t keep his word.  It’s death for every man Jack of ’em when he has finished with ’em.”

Long Jim was plying the needle again, and Buckrow and Thirkle were holding a conference at the wheel and studying a chart.  I could see the red head of Petrak nodding to them as they submitted some point to him; but he kept his eyes ahead of the steamer, evidently steering for some point of land.  Thirkle finally folded up the chart and tucked it in his pocket; and Buckrow took his post again at the port end of the bridge and studied the western horizon.

I saw a Chinese in blue nankeen come out of the starboard passage below the bridge and cautiously look up at the bridge.  He did not see Long Jim, so intent was he on looking up; but when the cockney drew a pistol he screamed shrilly and fled into the passage, his long queue sticking out behind like an attenuated pennant, so swift was his flight.

Thirkle and Buckrow came down to the fore-deck and gathered the sacks which Long Jim had fashioned.  Before they went down the ’tween-decks companion Thirkle looked forward toward the forecastle and hesitated a minute, as if he were in doubt about our being secure enough.  But he went down after the others, and we heard hammering behind the bulkhead again.

Petrak remained at the wheel, a jaunty figure with a white canvas cap on his flaming head and one of Captain Riggs’s best Manila cigars between his teeth.  He managed the wheel with one hand, holding a pistol ready with the other, and looking the ship over from time to time.

“They are steering to pass in behind the island,” said Riggs, as I went below.  “It is about four miles ahead now, and they are at half steam again, because the reefs are bad in here—­coral-banks and ledges running out from the mainland.  When they get her in the lee of the island they’ll make a quick job of her, and us, too.”

“If I don’t make a quick job of them with the pistol,” I said.