Be careful now; don't talk any more--the captain is just coming out of the pilot house." As greatly as this brief, hastily whispered conversation had served to clear up certain puzzling matters in my mind, the total result of the information thus imparted by Elsie Clark only rendered the situation more complex and puzzling.

Evidently the other prisoner had not been confined on the upper deck, but had been more securely hidden away below, where her presence on board would better escape detection.

For what purpose?
A sinister one, beyond all doubt--the expression of a vague fear in Kirby's heart that, through some accident, her identity might be discovered, and his plans disarranged.

I was beginning to suspect I might not have rightly gauged those plans.

The first suspicion which assailed me was whether or not the man himself had already determined that his prisoner was not merely a helpless slave in his hands, to be dealt with as he pleased under the law, but a free white woman.