"What was Vandersee doing here?" demanded Barry, not yet distinguishing Gordon's face.

"You've been dreaming, skipper," returned Gordon, busying himself with fresh bandages to avoid facing Barry for a moment.

"Dreaming my aunt!"

"I think you have," insisted Gordon, and now he came to the cot and began to remove Barry's bandages. "Let me renew your dressings."

"Oh, it's you, is it, Gordon?" exclaimed Barry, now wide awake, if he had been dreaming before. "Then you'll tell me the truth, won't you? If that wasn't Vandersee I saw a moment ago, and two naval officers with him, my brain's cracked, that's all."

"Not cracked, Captain. That's the effect of the medicine you've taken.

No doubt Mr. Little will have some queer notions, too, when he wakes up. It's better for you to throw out all these notions as soon as they form. They only hinder your recovery. Now let me fix you up."

"Not one d.a.m.ned bandage! If I'm to be treated like a baby, I'll act like one. Let Miss Sheldon do it. She won't lie, anyhow."

Gordon laid down his dressings and left the hut without a reply. And Barry lay there, fuming, sore, and sick, waiting for the nurse who never appeared. Hours seemed to pa.s.s; certainly one hour had gone; then it was Mrs. Goring who came in, swiftly hiding a troubled expression beneath a sunny smile of greeting.

"I'll have to inflict myself on you, Captain," she said, deftly removing his bandages, in spite of his petulant objections. "Miss Sheldon has not yet returned," she went on. "She visited your men, you know. She will come to you as soon as possible, for she considers you her own private patient."

Mrs. Goring beamed kindly upon him, and the skipper's irritation pa.s.sed under her sympathetic touch.

"Tell me," he begged cajolingly, "wasn't that Vandersee in here awhile ago?"

"Oh, he's been here many times, Captain," smiled back Mrs. Goring.

"Yes, yes, I know. I mean while Gordon was here with us."

"Why, didn't you ask him?"

"Oh, tell me, or say you won't," Barry burst out angrily. "Of course I asked him. He said not. Gordon's a liar!"

"S-sh!" she soothed, laying a cool hand on Barry's heated forehead. He failed to catch the look of pain his words brought into her eyes, or he must have cringed with shame. "This is not like you, Captain Barry, to say such things behind one's back."

"I beg your pardon," mumbled the skipper humbly. And he relapsed into sullen silence, feigning sleep again simply to escape her steady gaze.

She watched him awhile, then giving an inquiring glance at Little, adjusting his curtains and pillow, she left the room, and silence once more settled down that lasted until Little emerged from his drugged sleep and sat up with a noisy yawn.

"Say, Barry; what did you dream about?" he cried, rubbing his eyes furiously as if to clear cobwebs from his brain. "Did you have any dope in your physic?"

"I don't know," growled the skipper. "I know I saw Vandersee here, the moment I woke up, with some sailors, and they tell me I dreamed it!"

"Oh, then, it's all right," replied Little carelessly. "You must have had the same dope. I dreamed they were here just as I dropped off to sleep. Was Gordon with you, too?"

"He was, and he was no dream!"

"That's right, too. He gave me some dope that made me sleep like an infant. I suppose it's the poison of those ants that makes us imagine creepy things."

"By G.o.dfrey, I don't imagine anything!" cried Barry, and he tore down his curtains and leaped to the floor. "I'm going to dress and put an end to this Hobson-Jobson flummery!" He tottered, clawed wildly at the air, and pitched headlong beside Little's cot.

"There! It's the poison," moaned Little, squirming out of his bed and trying to lift his friend up. Then his own world spun around him, and he fell beside Barry, every inch of ant-bitten skin a blazing patch of torture.

Mrs. Goring and Natalie, entering together five minutes later, found them there; and all the good already accomplished had to be done over.

It was two days now before the patients were able to recognize their nurses; but when recognition came, at least one of the women sighed thankfully to notice that Barry no longer harped upon naval officers and Vandersee. His relapse seemed to have driven all earlier ideas from his head; his bodily weakness was so intense that Mrs. Goring found him a babe in her hands, and Natalie could scarcely tend him for the weakness that attacked her at sight of him.

But the day came when he and Little were permitted to walk, and then the stockade formed their promenade ground. With a nurse for each, their convalescence could have been no more agreeable in the midst of civilization. And as Barry gained strength, yet before Jerry Rolfe was allowed in to worry him about the ship, he found himself and Natalie, Little and Mrs. Goring, pairing off in their slow rambles, and once more awkwardness of speech descended upon him like a wet blanket. He had caught a suggestive look on Little's face, and an answering smile on Mrs. Goring's, that told him as plainly as words that his opportunity was thus given to him.

So, while his heart burst with sentiment, and his arms ached to take Natalie in them, his tongue declined its office and left him a gaping, speechless sailor. Natalie did not help him either; for as his awkwardness increased, he sensed at first, then saw, that she was consumed with some powerful emotion that certainly was not love for him.

Then he surprised her regarding him with fixed attention, when he had turned away to gather a flower for her hair; and in a flash he saw what her emotion was. It was dull, rankling uncertainty, and all the lover fled from him, leaving only the keen sailor with a keen sailor's sense.

"Miss Sheldon, I was just going to call you Natalie and tell you something very near to my heart," he blurted out. "I'm going to forget that, now, and wait until you get what's troubling you off your mind."

"Why, Captain Barry!" she cried, blushing furiously, "whatever do you mean? There is nothing troubling me, except the trouble that has come upon this peaceful little station."

"I beg your pardon, but there is," persisted Barry bluntly. "You still doubt me and my business and feel that I have painted Leyden black out of spite. Now, if Vandersee and Mrs. Goring and the rest can't convince you, I'm going to let you see it for yourself when the time comes. Let me tell you one thing, though; if Leyden were on the square, he'd be down at his ship seeing about getting her out of this hole. You don't see him around, do you?"

"No!" the girl cried hotly. "Of course we don't. What is the use of Mr.

Leyden staying here when your ship blocks him in? He told me he was going to the other side of the island for official help."

"Official help!" gasped Barry, peering hard into the girl's eyes, in amazement at her utter belief. "He told you! Why, he can get all the official help right here, any time Vandersee's around. He don't dare, though. What did he sink my ship for?"

"He would dare, I know, if Mr. Vandersee's friends were true sailors.

Mr. Leyden has told me repeatedly that those naval seamen are false; and since Mr. Vandersee disappeared a few days ago, never inquiring into the matter of these two ships in the river, I'm inclined to believe him, though I was almost persuaded that you were right and he was wrong."

"But my ship! He sunk her, didn't he?"

"I don't believe he did, Captain Barry," returned Natalie simply.

"Whether you know it or not, and I'd rather think you did not, I believe somebody in your own crew sank your ship simply to annoy Mr. Leyden."

The skipper panted heavily, almost choked by his rising spleen, tottering shakily, as temper battled with imperfect recovery of strength. His lips opened and remained open, speechless; and his face grew purple, then white, until Miss Sheldon cast off her own trouble and saw in him only a patient needing the tenderest care. She a.s.sisted him back to the hut and saw him safely on his cot; then he was given a strong sleeping draft and slept clear through the night, awaking with clearer head and a determination to say no more to Natalie until things had straightened themselves out.

In the morning Mrs. Goring entered hurriedly and her first words were: "Captain Barry, Miss Sheldon's disappeared! Gone utterly!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The announcement staggered Barry and caused Little to gape like a stranded codfish. The ex-salesman, not having suffered such a relapse as the skipper, got in motion first and darted outside to get a better grasp on things in the open air. Mrs. Goring and Barry, left alone, looked at each other closely for a silent moment, then the skipper gasped:

"Leyden's work!"

"I'm afraid it is," replied the woman, and her soft eyes moistened at his agony. "His work or his agency, Captain."

"Mrs. Goring," Barry's voice grew level and cold, "will you tell me what relationship there is between that sweet girl and that utter scoundrel?

She saw some of his fine work when Rolfe found us on those ant heaps; she heard all about Leyden's fake sailors, by whom we were taken; she told me over and over that she believed in Vandersee--yet last evening she returned to the same old story, doubting me and my business, and intimating that Leyden was the wronged innocent. I'm no lady's man--I'm a simple sailor--and I'm blessed if I can fathom it!"

Mrs. Goring was silent for several minutes, gazing into his face with deepest sympathy. She was troubled too; but under the pain a glad resignation seemed to shine out. She said, very softly:

"My dear friend, a woman's heart is a wonderful enigma. A girl's first love is far more wonderful. It is beyond reason, beyond understanding, incapable of a.n.a.lysis. And that is all the mystery with Natalie. She is the soul of purity, Captain, and more honest than honor. You have seen, and others have seen, that she likes you and aches to believe in you; but, innocent soul that she is, Leyden met her first, was the first man to apply himself to winning her affections, and he has fascinated her.

You know she has left the Mission to go back to Java with him?