"Is it possible, Madame Gilbert, that you are a Socialist? I could not have believed it of you if I had not hair-r-d your terrible wur-r-ds with my own ears."
"I am more than a Socialist," said Madame proudly. "I am a Bolshevist where the humble poor are concerned."
Ewing shuddered. "I could not have believed it. It is just peetiful trash that you speak. And you in other respects a maist sensible wumman. What is ceevilisation?" Ewing flung out this large inquiry, and an answer not being offered, proceeded to supply one himself. "Ceevilisation is brains, Madame. Capital is not brains; it is gilded idleness levying toll on the honest wor-r-ker. Toilsome sweat is not brains; it just stupidly does what it is told by superior intelligences. Sir John Toppys is not ceevilisation. The men who obey our or-r-ders above deck and in the engine-room are not ceevilisation. WE are ceevilisation. Ching and I—and you, Madame, who have waived your claim to a share. And quite right, too. In strict economic justice, I, Alexander Ewing, should draw a lairger dividend from the boodle than Rober-r-t Ching. And for why? Because I have the mair brains. The oreeginal idea of this smuggling plant was mine. But I say nothing about that," he added generously. "Share and share alike. But if," he went on with vicious emphasis, "any of my engine-room hands, or my Engineers, peer their noses into my private enterprises I will sor-r-t their fat car-r-cases with a coal shovel. Ceevilisation is brains, Madame. Don't for peety's sake tell you fearsome Socialism to me any more. I just canna bear it."
The plunder was all in fat United States dollars, a noble currency which towers like a mountain peak amidst the wreckage of European depreciated paper. Ewing saw to that. He dribbled out his highly demanded stores in quantities that rather added to than diminished the exuberant buoyancy of the market. He was a Scotsman who had made a Corner, next perhaps to a Scotsman on the Make the most noble Wor-r-k of God. Dagoes of varied hues, and of more than doubtful parentage, came and went; they were closeted with Ewing in the saloon, and departed stripped. They got their dyes and their chemicals and their naughty dopes, but what a hair-raising price they were compelled to pay!
"I am no profiteer," declared Ewing. "Just a plain, honest Scottish mairchant. I chairge no mair than the mar-r-ket will bear. And I have a suspeecion that there will be no excess profits duty paid on this deal. We are private persons engaged in honourable professions, not traders or registered partners. Besides we are out of the jurisdiction of the wucked English income tax. We are patriots, too, employed upon the noble wor-r-k of reconstructing the trade of the British Empire."
When one combines lofty patriotism with some five hundred per cent. profit, the result cannot fail to be profoundly gratifying.
CHAPTER V WILLATOPY: PILOT
They drew away from the South American Coast and headed for New Zealand and the Coral Sea beyond. And as Robert Ching pored over the chart of the Coral Sea it was borne in upon him that the navigation of those many spiked waters would, in the absence of a pilot, be as big a job as he wanted. The Humming Top drew no more than ten and a half feet of water, and was specially guarded under her keel by six inches of solid teak—Ching had demanded the false, protective keel before he would consent to take the yacht to the Torres Straits—but she was big enough to tear herself to pieces on those frightful coral teeth if permitted to swerve only by a little from the tortuous channels.