" Poor, stupid old Bill!
Blodgett snorted angrily, but the others laughed at Bill--silly old butt of
the forecastle, daft about his little girl!--and after speculating at
length concerning the treasure that Blodgett had described so vaguely, fell
at last into a hot argument about how far a skipper could disobey the
orders of his owners without committing piracy.
Thus began the rumor that revealed the scatterwitted convictions so
characteristic of the strange, cat-like Blodgett, which later were to lead
almost to death certain simple members of the crew; which served, by a
freak of chance, to involve poor Bill Hayden in an affair that came to a
tragic end; and which, by a whim of fortune almost as remote, though
happier, placed me in closer touch with Roger Hamlin than I had been since
the Island Princess sailed from Salem harbor.
An hour later I saw the cook standing silently by his galley. He gave me
neither look nor word, although he must have known that I was watching him,
but only puffed at his rank old pipe and stared at the stars and the hills.
I wondered if the jungle growth reminded him of his own African tropics; if
behind his grim, seamed face an unsuspected sense of poetry lurked, a sort
of half-beast, half-human imagination.
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