The second mate now handed me the candle, and bent over and examined the
hole the man had cut in the ceiling. "Is the scoundrel trying to sink us?"
he asked hotly.
Roger smiled. "I suspect there's more than that behind this little
project," he replied.
The man from Boston groaned. "Don't--don't twist my arm," he begged.
"Heee-ha-ha!" laughed the cook. "Guess Ah knows whar dat money is."
"Open up the hole, Ben," said Roger.
I saw now that there was a chalk-line, as true as the needle, from
somewhere above us in the darkness, drawn along the skin of the hold
perpendicular to the keelson, and that the man from Boston had begun to cut
at the bilge where the line crossed it.
He blinked at me angrily as I sawed through the planks. But when with
chisel and saw I had removed a square yard of planking and revealed only
the bilge-water that had backed up from the pump well, he brightened. Had
the Island Princess not been as tight as you could wish, we should have had
a wetter time of it than we had. Our feet were wet as it was, and the man
from Boston was sadly drabbled.
"There's nothing there?" said Roger, interrogatively. "Hm! Put your hand in
and feel around."
I reluctantly obeyed.
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