He looked round and laughed at his own men, and again they all laughed as if he had said something clever, and he and Kipping exchanged glances.
"They ain't found the gold," he caustically remarked to Kipping. "We'll see what we shall see."
"Ay, we'll see," Kipping returned, mildly. "We'll see. It'll be fun to see it, too, won't it, sir?"
It was all very silly, and we, of course, had nothing to say in return; so we watched them, with our muskets peeping over the bulwark and with the long gun and the stern-chasers cleared in case of trouble, and in undertones we kept up an exchange of comments.
After whispering among themselves, the men in the boat once more began to row toward us. Singularly enough they showed no sign of the exhaustion that a little before had seemed so painful. It slowly dawned upon me that their air of misery had been nothing more than a cheap trick to play upon our compassion. We watched them suspiciously, but they now assumed a frank manner, which they evidently hoped would put us off our guard.
"Now you men listen to me," said Falk. "After all, what's the use of behaving this way? You're just getting yourselves into trouble with the law. We can send you to the gallows for this little spree, and what's more we're going to do it—unless, that is, unless you come round sensible and call it all off. Now what do you say? Why don't you be reasonable? You take us on board and we'll use you right and hush all this up as best we can. What do you say?"
"What do we say?" said Roger, "We say that bread and water have gone to your head. You were singing another time a while back."
"Oh well, we were a little down in the mouth then. But we're feeling a sight better now. Come, ain't our plan reasonable?"
All the time they were rowing slowly nearer to the ship.
"Mistah Falk, O Mistah Falk!"