"I wonder what's keeping Mr. Parmalee this morning," she observed.

"He's even more of a sleepy head than you are."

"Tired out, I guess," conjectured the captain. "This storm has used us all up pretty well."

Ruth summoned Namco and told him to knock on Mr. Parmalee's door. The j.a.panese was back in a minute.

"Honorable gent no ansler," he reported.

"That's queer," remarked the captain. "I'll step there myself."

He returned promptly, looking very grave. "He isn't there," he announced.

"Perhaps he's gone on deck to get an appet.i.te for breakfast," suggested Drew lightly.

"It's not alone that he's absent," said the captain in a worried tone.

"His bed hasn't been slept in!"

There was a chorus of startled exclamations. Drew and Tyke jumped to their feet and Ruth lost her color.

"Oh, Daddy!" she cried, "it can't be that anything's happened to him?"

"Don't get excited, Ruth," said her father soothingly. "There may be some explanation. I'll have the ship searched at once."

They all hurried on deck, and the captain summoned the mate and Mr.

Rogers. He told them what he feared and ordered that the ship be searched thoroughly.

Rogers turned to obey, but the one-eyed mate, Cal Ditty, stopped him with a gesture.

"No use," he said. "Mr. Parmalee ain't here."

"How do you know?" cried the captain.

"Because he was thrown overboard last night," was the sudden grim answer.

Ruth gave a smothered shriek and the others gasped in amazement and horror.

"What do you mean?" shouted the captain.

"Just what I said."

"Who threw him overboard?"

"He did," declared Ditty, pointing to Drew.

There was a moment of terrible silence as the others looked in the direction of the mate's pointing finger.

Drew stood as though he were turned to stone. His tongue was paralyzed. He saw consternation in the faces of Tyke and the captain.

He glimpsed the horror in the eyes of Ruth. Then, with a roar of rage, he hurled himself at the one-eyed mate.

"You lying hound!" he shouted. "If crime's been done, _you've_ committed it."

Ditty slid back a step and met the younger man's charge with a coolness that showed his taunt had been premeditated and that this result was expected. As the enraged Drew closed in, the mate met him with a frightful swing to the side of his bandaged head.

Drew's head rocked on his shoulders, and for a moment he was dazed.

Blood flowed from under the bandage, and in an instant his cheek and neck were besmeared with it. The bucko, with the experience of long years of rough fighting, landed a second blow before the confused Drew could put up his defense again.

But that was the last blow Ditty did land. Drew's brain cleared suddenly. Hot rage filled his heart. He forgot his surroundings. He forgot that Ruth stood by to see his metamorphosis from a civilized man into an uncivilized one. He forgot everything but the leering face of the lying scoundrel before him, and he proceeded to change that face into a bruised mask.

His skill and speed made the mate, with only brute force behind him, seem like a child. Drew closed Ditty's remaining eye, split his upper lip, puffed both his cheeks till his nose was scarcely a ridge between them, and ended by landing a left hook on the point of the jaw that knocked the mate down and out.

As Drew fell back from the fray, which had lasted only seconds, so swift was the pace, Tyke seized him.

"You've done enough, boy! You've done enough, Allen!" he exclaimed.

"Leave life in the scoundrel so we can get the truth out of him."

CHAPTER XVIII

A SEA COURT

"Mr. Rogers, take the deck!" commanded Captain Hamilton sharply. "You bullies, get forward with you!" he added to the curious men of the watch. "Don't any of you lose sight of the fact that if it were a seaman instead of a pa.s.senger who attacked Mr. Ditty, he'd be in the chain-locker now.

"Drew, you and Tyke come below with me. When you've washed your face, Mr. Ditty, I want to see you there too. Mr. Rogers!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" responded the second officer, smartly.

"Pa.s.s the word forward. Has anybody seen Mr. Parmalee or does any of them know personally what's happened to him? No second-hand tales, mind you."

"Aye, aye, sir."

With all his rage and confusion of mind, Drew realized that easy-going, peace-loving Captain Hamilton had suddenly become another and entirely different being.

Even Ruth descried no softness in her father's countenance now. She noted that his eye sparkled dangerously. He waved her before him, and she fled down the companionway steps ahead of Drew and Grimshaw.

"Now, what's all this about?" the master of the _Bertha Hamilton_ demanded, facing Drew across the cabin table.

"Oh, Father!" gasped Ruth. "That--that--Mr. Ditty says Mr. Parmalee is murdered and that Allen did it!"

"That's neither here nor there," said the captain sternly. "I don't believe that any more than you do. But what is this between Ditty and Mr. Drew? They went at each other like two bulldogs that have nursed a grudge for a year.

"Now, I want to know what it means, Drew. I heard--Ruth told me--of the little run-in you had with Ditty the day you first met my daughter on the Jones Lane pier," pursued Captain Hamilton. "Ruth was carrying a letter to Captain Peters for me. The _Normandy_ is bound for Hong Kong, where I'd just come from, and Peters and I have mutual friends out there. I forgot something I wanted Ruth to tell Captain Peters, and I asked Ditty, who had sh.o.r.e leave, to waylay her and give her my message. She'd never seen Ditty, and he startled her. He isn't a beauty, I admit. But now, what happened after that between you two, Drew?"

"Nothing at all that day," said the young man promptly. "But another day I was over there, at the _Normandy_, to see--er--Captain Peters, and this fellow showed up half drunk and gave me the dirty side of his tongue. I knocked him down."

"Seems to me you're mighty sudden with your fists," growled Captain Hamilton.