Renshaw took the letter hastily.  It contained only a line in Sleight’s hand.  “If you change your mind, the bearer may be of service to you.”

He turned abruptly to Nott.  “You say it was the same Lascar you saw before?”

“It was.”

“Then all I can say is, he is no agent of De Ferrieres’,” said Renshaw, turning away with a disappointed air.  Mr. Nott would have asked another question, but with an abrupt “Good-night” the young man entered his room, locked the door, and threw himself on his bed to reflect without interruption.

But if he was in no mood to stand Nott’s fatuous conjectures, he was less inclined to be satisfied with his own.  Had he been again carried away through his impulses evoked by the caprices of a pretty coquette and the absurd theories of her half imbecile father?  Had he broken faith with Sleight and remained in the ship for nothing, and would not his change of resolution appear to be the result of Sleight’s note?  But why had the Lascar been haunting the ship before?  In the midst of these conjectures he fell asleep.

VII.

Between three and four in the morning the clouds broke over the Pontiac, and the moon, riding high, picked out in black and silver the long hulk that lay cradled between the iron shells and warehouses and the wooden frames and tenements on either side.  The galley and covered gangway presented a mass of undefined shadow, against which the white deck shone brightly, stretching to the forecastle and bows, where the tiny glass roof of the photographer glistened like a gem in the Pontiac’s crest.  So peaceful and motionless she lay that she might have been some petrifaction of a past age now first exhumed and laid bare to the cold light of the stars.

Nevertheless, this calm security was presently invaded by a sense of stealthy life and motion.  What had seemed a fixed shadow suddenly detached itself from the deck and began to slip stanchion by stanchion along the bulwarks toward the companion-way.  At the cabin-door it halted and crouched motionless.  Then rising, it glided forward with the same staccato movement until opposite the slight elevation of the forehatch.  Suddenly it darted to the hatch, unfastened and lifted it with a swift, familiar dexterity, and disappeared in the opening.  But as the moon shone upon its vanishing face, it revealed the whitening eyes and teeth of the Lascar seaman.

Dropping to the lower deck lightly, he felt his way through the dark passage between the partitions, evidently less familiar to him, halting before each door to listen.