The steward shook his head.

"I bet you twenty to ten," the sick man insisted. "What's eatin'
you, anyway?"

"You live, me lose, me pay you," the steward explained. "You die, I
win, you dead; no pay me."

Still grinning and shaking his head, he went his way.

"Just the same, sir, it'll be rich testimony," David chuckled. "An'
can't you see the reporters eatin' it up?"

The Asiatic clique in the cook's room has its suspicions about the
death of Marinkovich, but will not voice them. Beyond shakings of
heads and dark mutterings, I can get nothing out of Wada or the
steward. When I talked with the sail-maker, he complained that his
injured hand was hurting him and that he would be glad when he could
get to the surgeons in Seattle. As for the murder, when pressed by
me, he gave me to understand that it was no affair of the Japanese or
Chinese on board, and that he was a Japanese.

But Louis, the Chinese half-caste with the Oxford accent, was more
frank. I caught him aft from the galley on a trip to the lazarette
for provisions.

"We are of a different race, sir, from these men," he said; "and our
safest policy is to leave them alone. We have talked it over, and we
have nothing to say, sir, nothing whatever to say. Consider my