“You’re going to start for Guayaquil to-morrow,” repeated Blake, “and you’re going to take me along with you!”
“My friend,” retorted Pip, emitting a curling geyser of smoke as long and thin as a pool-que, “you’re sure laborin’ under the misapprehension this steamer o’ mine is a Pacific mailer! But she ain’t, Blake!”
“I admit that,” quietly acknowledged the other man. “I saw her yesterday!”
“And she don’t carry no passengers—she ain’t allowed to,” announced her master.
“But she’s going to carry me,” asserted Blake, lighting a fresh cigar.
“What as?” demanded Tankred. And he fixed Blake with a belligerent eye as he put the question.
“As an old friend of yours!”
“And then what?” still challenged the other.
“As a man who knows your record, in the next place. And on the next count, as the man who’s wise to those phony bills of lading of yours, and those doped-up clearance papers, and those cases of carbines you’ve got down your hold labeled bridge equipment, and that nitro and giant-caps, and that hundred thousand rounds of smokeless you’re running down there as phonograph records!”
Tankred continued to smoke.