At this Chris raised a feeble lamentation, but he was evidently a person whose objections nobody was accustomed to heed.  Captain Magnus, who might with plausibility have urged claims superior to those of all the rest, assented to the arrangement with a willingness which filled me with boding.  I had caught his restless furtive eye fixed gloatingly upon me more than once.  I saw that he was aware of my terror, and exulted in it, and took a feline pleasure in playing me, as it were, and letting me realize by slow degrees what his power over me would be when he chose finally to exert it.  My best hope for the present, once the merciful or prudent Tony was out of sight, lay in this disposition of my tormentor to sit quiescent and anticipate the future.  Nevertheless, in leaving the cabin I had slipped into my blouse a small penknife which I had found in Aunt Jane’s bag.  It was quite new, and I satisfied myself that the blades were keen.  My own large sheath-knife and my revolver I had been deprived of at the suggestion of the thoughtful Magnus.  I had surrendered them unprotestingly, fearful of all things that my possessions might be ransacked and Peter’s diary, though hidden with much art at the bottom of a bag, be brought to light.  For I might yet sell the secret of the Island Queen at a price which should redeem us all.

Unobtrusively clutching for comfort at the penknife in my blouse, I watched the departure of the pirates, including my protector Tony.  They had taken Mr. Tubbs with them, although he had magnanimously offered to remain behind and help guard the camp.  Evidently his experience of the previous day had not filled him with confidence in his new friends.  It might be quite possible that he intended, if left behind, to turn his coat again and assist us in a break for liberty.  If so, he was defeated by the perspicacious Tony, who observed that when he found a pal that suited him as well as Washtubs he liked to keep him under his own eye.  With a spade over his reluctant shoulder, and many a dubious backward glance, Mr. Tubbs followed the file into the woods.

Aunt Jane had a bad headache, and as nobody objected she had remained in the cabin.  Miss Browne and I had been informed by Tony that we might do as we liked so long as we did not attempt to leave the clearing.  Already Violet had betaken herself to a camp-chair in the shade and was reading a work entitled Thoughts on the Involute Spirality of the Immaterial.  Except for the prisoners tied to the palm tree, the camp presented superficially a scene of peace.  Cookie busied himself with a great show of briskness in his kitchen.  Because of the immense circumspection of his behavior he was being allowed a considerable degree of freedom.  He served his new masters apparently as zealously as he had served us, but enveloped in a portentous silence.  “Yes, sah—­no, sah,” were the only words which Cookie in captivity had been heard to utter.  Yet from time to time I had caught a glance of dark significance from Cookie’s rolling eye, and I felt that he was loyal, and that this enforced servitude to the unkempt fraternity of pirates was a degradation which touched him to the quick.