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"Small chap, in a white navy-cap, and 'air red as the sun in the Gulf of H'annam." Perhaps I should have told the policeman about Petrak, when I heard the cockney say he had seen a red-headed little man in a white navy-cap running away from the Flagship Bar.
Undoubtedly he was going for a pistol, but we had to get him when the time offered; and, besides, he was getting ready to tell Riggs all about me and my crew. There wasn't a second to lose. I met him as he was coming back and held him for Petrak, and we did the job quietly." "It was something to be proud of," I remarked. "I never would have given the Rev. Luther Meeker credit for it."
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.
Petrak worked with a cloth on the brass-knob, and he was loafing without a doubt. I suspected that he was afraid I was waiting for him to go away, so that I might go up the ladder to the bridge. One of the men who had brought Meeker's organ aboard had the wheel, a long, lanky cockney he was, from what I could see of him through the window of the pilot-house.
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.
"We did very well after I had convinced him that I had no hand in the murder of Trego. You gentlemen certainly know your business, I must say." "Oh, don't include me in the compliment," said Thirkle, bowing to Buckrow and Petrak.
We covered Thirkle with sand, but Riggs said he would carry him back to Manila with the gold. Rajah was in the boat, and we were prying it off the shingle and waiting for a favouring wave when we were startled with a hail from the jungle. "Cap'n Riggs! Oh, Cap'n Riggs!" "Who's there?" I shouted, although I knew. "Petrak don't leave me here, cap'n!
I had had grounds enough for making a complaint against Meeker and Petrak when I found the little red-headed man sneaking outside my door in the hotel, and the supposed missionary blocking my pursuit on the stairway.
Petrak went up the ladder, his progress over each iron step plain to me by the jingle of the chains dangling from his wrists, and before I had settled in my mind what had happened the pair of them were gone. Buckrow had rescued the little red-headed man from the ship's brig.
Luther Meeker, and Buckrow, Long Jim, and Petrak came aboard the Kut Sang, giving their descriptions as well as I could remember. Then I told of the killing of Trego, and all that had happened aboard the steamer, and about the gold and the plight we were in, "skeletonizing" the narrative, much as if it were to be filed as a news-cable.
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