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The Captain's room was the largest one of the six staterooms opening from the main cabin. "Here we are!" exclaimed Kitchell as he and Wilbur entered. "The old man's room, and no mistake." Besides the bunk, the stateroom was fitted up with a lounge of red plush screwed to the bulkhead.
I was wondering what could 'a' wrecked her in this weather. Lord, it's as plain as Billy-b'damn." The dory was alongside. Kitchell watched his chance, and as the bark rolled down caught the mainyard-brace hanging in a bight over the rail and swung himself to the deck. "Look sharp!" he called, as Wilbur followed. "It won't do for you to fall among them shark, son. Just look at the hundreds of 'em.
He was a tall, well-made fellow, with ruddy complexion and milk-blue eyes, and was dressed, as if for heavy weather, in oilskins. "Well, sonny, you've had a fine mess aboard here," said Kitchell. The boy he might have been two and twenty stared and frowned. "Clean loco from the gas. Get him into the dory, son. I'll try this bloody cabin again."
The greater part of the class was already present, as were Dr. Kitchell and Miss Brosius. Dr. Kitchell was in the front of the room. Upon Elizabeth's entrance, with a gesture of his hand, he waved her toward a seat in the middle row. It was not her accustomed place of sitting. She looked about her. There seemed to have been a general scattering.
Elizabeth was among the last to leave. Her face was beaming with satisfaction at the spirit in which her plan had been carried out. In the main hall she met Dr. Kitchell. "The girls are all through," she exclaimed, a thrill of pleasureable excitement showing in her voice. "There was not a word spoken, nor communication of any sort."
She was not one to give expression to her feeling in words only. After her remarks to Dr. Kitchell, the other girls did most of the talking while she listened, turning the matter over in her mind. She had her father's way of straightening matters out. "If a thing is wrong, make it right if you can," she had often heard him say to Joe Ratowsky.
Kitchell was raging to and fro in the cabin in a frenzy of drink, axe in hand, smashing glassware, hacking into the wood-work, singing the while at the top of his voice: "As through the drop I go, drop I go, As through the drop I go, drop I go, As through the drop I go, Down to hell that yawns below, Twenty stiffs all in a row Damn your eyes"
"If you are, the trap is going to be there. But now ... get away from here. Teodoro will ride with you as guide." "And the army after me. That’s it!" Drew had mounted. "That’s what you want, isn’t it? Me to pull the troops south? Huntin’ down an escaped horse thief they might slam into Kitchell...." What a trick! Topham had planned it without asking Drew’s support.
Why, I’ll wager you can’t even prove ownership of those horses you brought with you. Where’re your sale papers? On the other hand, Kirby, if you do give us the evidence we need against Kitchell and those who are helping him, then the court might be moved to leniency. How old are you? Nineteen—twenty—? Rather young to hang." "Captain, I can prove everything I’ve told you. In Kentucky I have kin.
But the bark had not been abandoned. The owner was on board. Kitchell was wrong; she was no derelict; not one penny could they gain by her salvage. For an instant a wave of bitterest disappointment passed over Wilbur as he saw his $30,000 dwindling to nothing. Then the instincts of habit reasserted themselves. The taxpayer in him was stronger than the freebooter, after all.
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