?"

"You know I always said there was a mystery about that boy?"

"Well, what of it?"

"Did you notice the way he bound your shoulder last night?"

"What of it?"

"Did you ever see a man bind a wound like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean simply that the mystery about our Jack Harkaway was just this:
Jack Harkaway was no boy at all--but just a girl; a brick of a
dare-devil girl!"

CHAPTER VIII

_Better Than Duck._

Charlie Webster's discovery--if discovery it was--of "Jack Harkaway's"
true sex seemed so far plausible in that it accounted not only for much
that had seemed mysterious about him and his manner, but also (though
this I did not mention to Charlie) it accounted for certain dim feelings
of my own, of which, before, I had been scarcely conscious.

But we were not long left to continue our speculations, being presently
interrupted by the arrival of exciting news--news which, I need hardly
say, promptly drove all thought of "Jack Harkaway" out of Charlie
Webster's head, though it was not so soon to be banished from mine.

The news came in the form of a note from Father Serapion. He had sent it
by the captain of a sponging schooner, who, in turn, had sent it by two
of his men in a rowboat, not being able to venture up the creek himself
owing to the northeast wind which was blowing so hard, that, as
sometimes happens on that coast, he might have been left high and dry.

Father Serapion's note simply confirmed his conjecture that it was
Tobias who had bought rum at Behring's Point, and that he was probably
somewhere in the network of creeks and marl lagoons in our
neighbourhood. Telling Tom to give the men a good breakfast, Charlie
thought the news over.

"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said presently. "I'm going to leave
you here--and I'm going to charter the sponger out there. This river we
are on comes out of a sound that spreads directly south--Turner's Sound.
Turner's Sound has two outlets: this, and Goose River ten miles down the
shore. Now, if Tobias is inside here, he can only get out either down
here, or down Goose River. I am going down in the sponger to the mouth
of Goose River, to keep watch there; and you must stay where you are,
and keep watch here. Between the two of us, a week will starve him out.
Or, if not, I'll chase after him up Goose River; and in that case, he'll
have to come down here--and it will be up to you, for I don't believe
he'll have the nerve to try walki