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He was as full of contradictions as he was of oddities, and no one knew how to take him. One moment he seemed to be hoarding his money like a miser, and the next scattering it with insane prodigality. "I'm tired out, Don John," added Captain Shivernock, as he seated himself, fanning his red face with his hat.
"Don John told me Captain Shivernock had a secret he wanted to keep." "I told you so!" exclaimed Donald. "You did; but you thought I knew the secret," answered Laud. "You told me the captain had given me the money not to tell that I had seen him near Saturday Cove on the morning after the Hasbrook affair." "I remember now," said Donald.
"Captain Shivernock gave it to me." "What for?" "I can't tell you that." "Why not?" "Because it is a matter between the captain and me." "I don't care if it is. You said you would answer all my questions, if I would not prosecute." "Questions about the Maud," explained Laud. "I have told you the secret of my love " "Hang the secret of your love!" exclaimed Donald, disgusted with that topic.
Whether Captain Shivernock was sane or insane, Donald Ramsay was in possession of the Juno. Of course he did not consider himself the proprietor of the craft, if he did of the sixty dollars he had in his pocket. She had the wind over her port quarter, and the boat tore through the water as if she intended to show her new skipper what she could do.
Donald thought it was hardly a fair question under the circumstances, and he made no answer, for he was thinking how he could get along without a lie, and still say nothing about Laud's connection with the bill, for that would expose Captain Shivernock. "You don't answer me, Don John," added the nabob, mildly. "I don't like to tell," replied Donald. "Why not?" "I promised not to do so."
He slept in the cabin of the Juno after he left the house of Captain Shivernock. He did not sleep any better than Donald Ramsay that night; and the long surges rolled in by the paddle-wheels of the steamer Richmond, as she came into the harbor early the next morning, awoke him.
"I would not be a party to the concealment of such an outrage." "You don't understand it. Hasbrook is a regular swindler." "That is no reason why he should be pounded half to death in the middle of the night." "He borrowed a thousand dollars of Captain Shivernock a short time before the outrage.
Here is the motive for the outrage," reasoned Laud. "Why didn't he prosecute him for swindling? for that's what it was." "Captain Shivernock says he won't trouble any courts to fight his battles for him; he can fight them himself." "It was wrong to pound any man as Hasbrook was. Why, he wasn't able to go out of the house for a month," added Donald, who was clearly opposed to Lynch law.
"You have my permission to go home," sneered the strange man; and Donald availed himself of it without another instant's delay. Certainly Captain Shivernock was a very strange man, and Donald could not begin to understand why he had given him the Juno and the sixty dollars in cash.
Somehow the case looked different now from what it had before. Laud had told where he got his money, and given a good reason, as it seemed to him at the time, for concealment; but why the strange man desired secrecy he was utterly unable to imagine. He almost wished he had told Captain Patterdale all about his meeting with Captain Shivernock on Long Island, and asked his advice.
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