I was in a quandary.  Something was going on aft—­but what?  Newman was missing.  The bucko knew he was absent from the gang, he must have known.  Yet he ignored his absence.  Was it treachery?  Was Newman in trouble?  Had he and I been mistaken in our judgment of Bucko Lynch?  Oh, I was tormented with fear—­and with doubt.  I wanted to gallop aft and lend him a hand, succor him, at least help him to put up a good fight.  But I wasn’t sure he was in trouble, that he would welcome my advertising his disappearance.  Perhaps he was keeping a rendezvous, with the second mate’s aid.

That was what the other lads thought.  Oh, aye, they missed him too.  But they didn’t have wit enough to realize that Lynch also had sharp eyes; they thought Lynch didn’t know Newman was gone.  They thought it was a great joke, a score against the cabin.  They thought Newman had boldly slipped away from work to meet the lady.

“The Big Un’s queenin’, b’gawd, right under the Old Man’s nose!” That’s how Boston put it.

I did nothing.  I made no break.  Luckily.  At seven bells, Lynch marshaled us aft again, to set the spanker this time.  As we worked, Newman slipped into the group as quietly and unobtrusively as he had slipped out nearly two hours before.  Coiling down gear, I discovered that the running part of the spanker vang was off the pin, and trailing over the side.  It dropped down past the open and lighted porthole of one of the cabin berths.  Whose berth?  Well, I thought that Boston had the right of it.  Newman had been “queenin’,” with his feet in the ocean, so to speak.

But he had been up to something else, as well.  As he and I walked forward, after the watch was relieved, we were overtaken by Lindquist, who was coming from the helm.

“Vat you ban doing mit da longboat to-night?” he asked Newman, curiously.

“Nothing, lad.  You must have dreamed at your Sybeel—­understand?” was Newman’s prompt reply.

It took a moment to filter into the squarehead’s mind.  But he got it.  “So—­ja, it ban dream; I see noddings,” he said.

“And you say nothing?”

“Ja, even to mineself I say noddings,” promised Lindquist.

At the foc’sle door, Newman placed a detaining hand upon my shoulder and held me back.

“Was there much comment among the hands?” he asked.

I told him what Boston had said, and that it was the common opinion.

“That will do no harm,” he remarked.  “So long as they did not see, or guess—­yes, it is a good blind.”

I was a little resentful, and showed it.  “You know I don’t want you to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me, but I think you might have dropped a hint In my ear.  How was I to know that the greaser hadn’t played a trick on you, and given you over to the Old Man?  I don’t know what game you’re playing, and if you don’t want to tell me I don’t want to know—­but I tell you I came pretty near spoiling it, whatever it is.  I was on the verge of going aft and raising a row, just to find out what had become of you.”