The Moving Picture Girls at Sea | Page 9

the ship," said Alice.
"Why, if he were blindfolded I should think he'd fall off, not knowing when he came to the end," Ruth remarked, with a little shudder.
"He doesn't know," Alice said. "That's an easy way of sending a man to his doom."
"That's it, Miss!" chimed in Jack. "You got th' idea!"
"But Alice, how did you know that dreadful thing?" her sister wonderingly demanded.
"Read it in a book. Go on please, Mr.--er--Jack."
"Of course I didn't want t' walk no plank," resumed the sailor, "so I temporized. I thought maybe I could beat th' mutineers after all. So I pretended t' join 'em. Things got pretty bad. Many of 'em was for puttin' th' captain away--tossin' him overboard, an' there was a fight about it. Matters got t' such a pass that pistols were fired, an' th' captain would have been shot, an' killed, only a fellow named Mike Tullane, a rough character, an' one of the leaders of th' mutiny, stepped up sudden like an' saved th' captain's life by knockin' aside th' ruffian's gun.
"Well, of course there was a fight then, but Mike seemed t' come out all right, bein' a leader, an' havin' th' men pretty well with him. Anyhow, th' mutineers were in charge of th' ship, an' off Anegada, one of th' little British Islands of the West Indies, we were put about t' run for port. Jest what was t' be done no one seemed to know. After the men got th' ship they didn't know what to do with her.
"Then came th' mystery. One night th' captain an' Mike Tullane disappeared. They was seen in th' cabin, talkin' together, an' some of th' hot-headed ones thought Mike was goin' back on his pals. They was for makin' him walk th' plank.
"But cooler heads made 'em wait. They said they wanted t' give Mike a chance to explain. But he never got it."
"Do you mean they--" began Alice, somewhat horrified.
"I mean that night he an' th' captain disappeared," Jack said. "They couldn't be found anywhere. No boat was taken, so they couldn't have gotten off in one of them craft, an' we wasn't near enough land t' make swimmin' safe. But they totally disappeared, an' that was th' mystery. Whether they had a fight, an' jumped overboard together in th' darkness, no one ever knowed, for them mutineers didn't keep extra good watch.
"But anyhow they was gone--mysteriously missin' as they say in the paper. That sort of took the heart out of some of th' mutineers and they got careless. First we knew a British vessel overhauled us, and, not likin' th' looks of things, began to ask questions. Of course there wasn't any captain, such as there should be on a ship, an' that made it look suspicious. Th' worst of it was that nobody could say where the captain was. None of us knew.
"Then th' story of th' mutiny came out, of course, an' it was all up. The Britisher took charge of us. I was arrested as the ringleader of the mutiny, an' put in chains! An' I had no more to do with it than a baby, Miss. No more than a baby!" and Jack Jepson looked from Ruth to Alice, his blue eyes expressing the indignation he had felt at the time.
"An' that's th' story of th' mystery, as I said I'd tell your sister," he added turning to Ruth.

CHAPTER V
THE MARY ELLEN
During the silence that followed the rather sudden ending of the old salt's story, Ruth and Alice looked at each other with wonder in their eyes. On all sides of them could be heard the clicking of the moving picture cameras, the loud directions issued by the men who were managing the different little dramas, and occasionally the sound of shots from the cowboy play that was going on in front of where our friends were seated on the bench, though at some distance away, for the studio was large.
"But that can't be all of it," said Alice, at length.
"All of what, Miss?" Jack Jepson asked.
"The mystery."
"That's all there is to any mystery, Miss," he said. "A mystery is a mystery, an' if it isn't solved, it's a mystery still, an' nobody can make any more of it. Th' captain and Mike Tullane completely disappeared, an' were never heard of afterward. That's th' mystery, an' all there is to it, jest as I told you."
"But about yourself?" asked Ruth. "You said you were put in chains, under arrest, as the ringleader of the mutiny."
"So I was."
"But what became of you?"
"Well, I escaped, Miss. It may not be a very nice thing to confess, but I escaped. Th' British ship took us to a jail on some island--I forget th' name of it. Anyhow I was locked up, an'