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Updated: May 7, 2025
"Amen!" breathed Captain Plum. Hands were fumbling with the chain at the dungeon door. It opened and Jeekum's ashen face shone in the candle-light. For a moment his frightened eyes rested on the two men still standing in their last embrace of friendship. A word of betrayal from them and he knew that his own doom was sealed. He came in, followed by four men.
The nervous whiteness left Jeekum's face at this cheerful report and he was about to close the door when Nathaniel exhibited a handful of gold pieces in the candle-light and frantically beckoned the man to come in. The jailer's eyes glittered understandingly and with a backward glance down the lighted corridor he thrust his head and shoulders inside.
"Where is Marion?" he cried softly, his heart standing still with dread. "Great God what about Marion?" For an instant the sheriff's ghastly face was pressed against the opening. "Marion has not been seen since morning. The king's officers are searching for her." The door slammed, the chains clanked loudly, and above the sound of Jeekum's departure Neil's voice rose in a muffled cry of joy.
At last he looked up, and Jeekum's face was far above him, staring straight and unseeing into the darkness ahead. His last spark of hope went out. After a time a dark rim loomed slowly up out of the sea. It was land, half a mile or so away. Nathaniel sat up with fresh interest, and as they drew nearer Jeekum rose to his feet and gazed long and steadily in both directions along the coast.
If the maneuvering of Jeekum's fingers meant anything it was intended for him alone. Action had been the manna of his life. The possibility of new adventure, even in the face of death, thrilled him. He waited, breathless and the strange pressure came again, so hard that it hurt his flesh. There was no longer a doubt in his mind. The king's sheriff wanted to speak to him.
Had some spot of lesser gloom ahead betrayed the prisoner's bowed head and Jeekum's white face turned to it? There was a steady pressure on Nathaniel's arm now, a warning, frightened pressure, and the hand that made it trembled. Jeekum feared the worst but his fear was not greater than the chill of disappointment that came to smother the excited beating of Nathaniel's heart.
"Five hundred dollars for that note!" he whispered. "Five hundred beside the four you've got!" "Jeekum's a fool!" said Neil, as the door closed on them. "I feel sorry for him." "Why?" "Because he is accepting the money. Don't you suppose that you have been searched? Of course you have probably before I came, while you were half dead on the floor. Somebody knows that you have the gold."
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