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He glanced in the opposite direction to the blue smoke rising above the Wilson cedars. Then, as he prepared to climb down, he apparently changed his mind, for instead of taking the path to Tom Wilson's he walked briskly down toward the walled in derrick. Reaching it he paused and an exclamation of surprise escaped him. On the door of the wall an iron padlock had been fastened. There was no sign of human life about the place but within the walls could be heard the fierce growling of dogs. Ringold backed away and eyed the tall derrick. There was mystery here and he didn't relish mysteries. And there was a pungent, salty smell about the place—the smell that oily machinery gives off when put under intense heat., Mr Lawrence seemed to read the man's thoughts. Unscrupulous as was this Naval gentleman, he was an extremely clever fellow. Preserving a severe austerity of countenance, a demeanour upon which the word discipline was writ large, he exclaimed: "It is not my intention to ask you if Mr Eagle has broken his faith with me and communicated to you the confidence I imparted to him this morning. You are, sir, by virtue of your rank aboard the ship free of this cabin, and it is therefore desirable that I should trust you. The lady in yonder berth is Miss Lucy Acton, who consented to elope with me, providing it should be understood by all on board that she was being kidnapped or stolen from her home. That this should appear, it was arranged between us that she should be locked up as though she were a prisoner, and then in a day or two I should enlarge her, and she would go amongst the crew and speak of my cunning and stratagem, and her desperate lot in being torn from her father's home. All which would in due course reach her father's ears, and mollify his wrath at her giving me her hand in the existing state of my fortunes, and preserve to her the fortune she must inherit as Captain Acton's[Pg 279] only child. Now, sir," continued Mr Lawrence in his frowning, imperious way, "this is submitted to you in confidence, and it is manifestly my wish that some of the crew should credit her story that they may give the evidence we desire when they are called upon to tell what they know!", Of this man, a toothless salt whose face was like an old potato, dark with the weather of[Pg 34] vanished days and covered with warts, an affecting story was told: it was evening, and the room was full of seafaring men, and this man, whose name was John Halliburton, sat at the table with a long clay pipe trembling in one hand and a glass of hot rum and water in reach of the other. Several songs had been sung by members of the company, and some one, by way of a joke, asked old John to oblige. To the amazement of everybody the old man put down his pipe, took off his hat, out of which he drew a large red handkerchief with which he polished his face, and then, fixing his lustreless eyes upon the man who had asked him to sing, broke into a song in a strange, quivering, fitful note, as though you should hear a drunken sailor singing in a vault. The assembly was hushed into deep stillness. It was certainly a most unparalleled circumstance for old John to sing. In the middle of the second verse, some old nautical ballad popular fifty years before, he stopped, put his handkerchief into his hat, and his hat upon his head, and resumed his pipe, gazing vacantly at the man who had asked him to sing..