"Sure," said Blodgett in a husky whisper, "it's a treasure such as never was heard of before. There's barrels and barrels of gold and diamonds and emeralds and rubies and no end of such gear. There's idols with crowns of precious stones, and eyes in their carved heads that would pay a king's ransom. There's money enough in gold mohurs and rupees to buy the Bank of England."
It was a cock-and-bull story that the little old man told us; but, absurd though it was, he had an air of impressive sincerity; and although every one of us would have laughed the yarn out of meeting had it been told of Captain Whidden, affairs had changed in the last days aboard ship. Certainly we did not trust Captain Falk. I thought of the cook's dark words, "A little roun' hole in the back of his head—he was shot f'om behine!" As we followed the direction of Blodgett's two hands,—the right to the northeast and the Chinese shore, the left to the northwest and the dim lowlands of Sumatra that lay along the road to Burma,—anything seemed possible. Moon-madness was upon us, and we were carried away by the mystery of the night.
Such madness is not uncommon. Of tales in the fore-castle during a long voyage there is no end. Extraordinary significance is attributed to trivial happenings in the daily life of the crew, and the wonders of the sea and the land are overshadowed completely by simple incidents that superstitious shipmates are sure to exaggerate and to dwell upon.
After a time, though, as Blodgett walked back and forth along the bulwark, like a cat that will not go into the open, my sanity came back to me.
"That's all nonsense," I said—perhaps too sharply; "Mr. Falk is an honest seaman. His whole future would be ruined if he attempted any such thing as that."
"Ay, hear the boy," Blodgett muttered sarcastically. "What does the boy think a man rich enough to buy all the ships in the king's navy will care for such a future as Captain Falk has in front of him? Hgh! A boy that don't know enough to call his captain by his proper title!"
Blodgett fairly bristled in his indignation, and I said no more, although I knew well enough—or thought I did—that such a scheme was quite too wild to be plausible. Captain Falk might play a double game, but not such a silly double game as that.
"No," said Bill Hayden solemnly, as if voicing my own thought, "the captain ain't going to spoil his good name like that." Poor, stupid old Bill!
Blodgett snorted angrily, but the others laughed at Bill—silly old butt of the forecastle, daft about his little girl!—and after speculating at length concerning the treasure that Blodgett had described so vaguely, fell at last into a hot argument about how far a skipper could disobey the orders of his owners without committing piracy.
Thus began the rumor that revealed the scatterwitted convictions so characteristic of the strange, cat-like Blodgett, which later were to lead almost to death certain simple members of the crew; which served, by a freak of chance, to involve poor Bill Hayden in an affair that came to a tragic end; and which, by a whim of fortune almost as remote, though happier, placed me in closer touch with Roger Hamlin than I had been since the Island Princess sailed from Salem harbor.