was taken from him.

"So you are still on board, eh?" roared Captain Barforth, when he
confronted the man. "What have you to say for yourself?"

"I--er--I haven't done anything wrong," was Wingate's stubborn reply.

"Oh, no, of course not!"

"He came at me in my sleep," cried Bahama Bill. "He had something in a
little white paper and he was trying to put it into my mouth when I
woke up an' caught him. I think he was going to poison me!" And he
leaped forward and caught the prisoner by the throat.

"Le--let up!" gasped the deck hand. "It--it's all a mis--mistake! I
wasn't going to poi--poison anybody."

"Maybe he vos poison does sandwiches, doo," suggested Hans. "I mean
dose dot made Bahama Pill sick."

"Like as not he did," growled the old tar. "He's a bad one, he is!" And
he shook the deck hand as a dog shakes a rat.

"He is surely in league with Sid Merrick," said Anderson Rover. He
faced Walt Wingate sternly. "Do you dare deny it?"

At first Wingate did deny it, but when threatened with severe
punishment unless he told the whole truth, he confessed.

"I used to know Sid Merrick years ago," he said. "He used me for a
tool, he did. When we met at Nassau he told me what he wanted done and
I agreed to do it, for some money he gave me and for more that he
promised me."

"And what did you agree to do?" asked Anderson Rover.

"I agreed to get a job as a deck hand if I could and then, on the sly,
cripple the yacht so she couldn't reach Treasure Isle as quick as the
_Josephine_--the steamer Merrick is on. Then I also promised to
make Bahama Bill sick if possible, so he couldn't go ashore and show
you where the cave was. I wasn't going to poison him. The stuff I used
was given to me by Merrick, who bought it at a drug store in Nassau. He
said it would make Bahama Bill sleepy--dopy, he called it."

"Did he tell you what the stuff was?"

"No."

"Then it may be poison after all," said Captain Barforth. "You took a
big risk in using it, not to say anything about the villainy of using
anything."

"Oh, jest let me git at him, cap'n!" came from Bahama Bill, who was
being held back by Fred and Songbird. "I'll show him wot I think o'
sech a measly scoundrel!" And he shook his brawny fist at the prisoner.

"I'm sorry now I had anything to do with Merrick," went on Walt
Wingate. "He always did lead me around by the nose."

"Well, he has led many others that way," answered Anderson Rover,
remembering the freight rob