“You poor beggar!” said Onslow, with the first scrap of sympathy he had yet shown to his partner. “I believe I understand, and it tones down your dingy color. You aren’t quite all black. I believe by your own painting you’re only a moderate sort of gray. And if I’ve been beastly rude and hard with you, because I’ve considered you a soapy scoundrel playing entirely for your own hand, I’ll apologize to you. That isn’t in the least polite, but I think it’s plain, and perhaps we shall get on together better now. But about this bankruptcy. It’ll be rather a mess if you go smash before our Florida operation realizes its profits. It will thicken the inquiry, you know, to a very unpleasant keenness.”
“I think I shall keep on my feet, Mr. Onslow. I trust, I pray I shall; and, moreover, I thank you for what you have said. I do confess that your manner of speech has wounded me much at times.”
“Oh, as to that,” returned Onslow, “I mostly say ‘spade’ when I mean it, and I don’t care to mix religion with theft, when I’m talking with a co-conspirator. But I fancy we understand one another more comfortably now, and I’ll leave you to make the rest of the arrangements here in London. This afternoon I’ll pick up Kettle and run down to Liverpool and get things in hand there. They’ll require care. To begin with, there’s a suitable armament to be smuggled on board without advertisement. And there are other nefarious preparations to be made. Piracy on the high seas is not a thing to be undertaken lightly nowadays; nor is murder.”
“Oh, heavens!” cried Shelf, “don’t speak of these horrors.”
“I speak of them,” replied Onslow grimly, “because it is right that you should understand what will probably be done. I don’t intend to redden my fingers if it can be avoided; but as I put my neck in jeopardy, failure or no failure, I naturally don’t intend to hesitate at any action which will bring unqualified success. Only understand fully, Mr. Theodore Shelf, that piracy you are already an active sharer in, and if there’s murder done to boot, you will be as guilty as the worst, even though you sit here in your snug London offices whilst other rougher men are handling pistol and knife in the Gulf or in a Floridan mangrove swamp.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SEND-OFF.
The Port Edes had gained the name of an unlucky ship. She had slain three men in her building; she had crushed another to death the day before she left the slips; and, though only three years in the water, she had already maimed enough hands from various crews to make her a full complement. Some vessels are this way; from no explainable cause there seems to be a diabolic fatality about them.
It is not to be supposed that sailormen rush to join a craft of this sinister reputation. Although they are called asses in the bulk, they are only asses in part. They always try for the best berths first. But because there are not enough of these to go round; and because, thanks to the Dago and the Dutchman, there are not sufficient berths of any sort whatever to supply all aspirants; it is always possible to man any vessel which a Board of Trade official will pass through a dock gates.
Just as no man is ever successful in anything without due cause, so per contra few sailormen are down on their luck except through some peculiar trait of incapacity. So that on your unpopular ship, be she tramp-steamer, or eke weeping wind-jammer, you do not get much pick of a crew. You have to put up with what other people have left, and it does not take you long to learn that your beauties have not been rejected for their excellences.