"With a mountain of treasure to be got," added Matterson.
The three spoke so gravely and straightforwardly now, that I wondered at their insolence; and as Sim and I got up to go, not yet quite believing that in reality, and not in a dream, we were being dispatched into the heart of that strange city, they accompanied us on deck and told Arnold Lamont that he was to go with us on our errand, and saw us safely started in the long boat of the Merry Jack and Eleanor before returning to their punch.
I could see that Arnold had no liking for the mission, but while we were in the boat he gave me no explanation of his uneasiness. Indeed, Sim Muzzy talked so much and so fast that, when he once got started, you could scarcely have thrust the point of a needle into his monologue.
"She's a slaver," he murmured as we pulled away from the Merry Jack and Eleanor. "A cruel-hearted slaver! Thank heaven, we're never to have a hand in any such iniquity as that."
We looked back at the ship, black and gloomy against the sky, with many men moving about on her deck.
"You're a silly fool," one of the oarsmen cried, having overheard him, "a man without stomach, heart, or good red blood."
"Stomach, is it?" Sim retorted. "I'll have you know I eat my three hearty meals a day and they set well too. I can eat as much victuals as the next man. Why—" And there was no stopping him till the boat bumped against a wharf and we three stepped out.
The boat, I noticed, instead of putting back to the ship, waited by the wharf.
I turned and looked at the restless harbor, on which each light was reflected as a long, tremulous finger of flame that reached almost to my feet, at the sky, in which the stars were now shining, and at the anchored ships, each with her own story, could one but have read it; then I yielded to Sim's importunate call and in the darkness turned after him and Arnold. What reason was there to suspect that Simeon Muzzy and I stood at a crossroads where our paths divided?
Coming to the street, we stopped, and in the light from an open window put our heads together over the paper that Gleazen had written out and given to us with instructions to show it to the first person we met and turn where he pointed.