“Say, cap,” said the long man, as he dallied with his last strawberry tartlet, “isn’t it so that you’ve got this fine steamboat of yours ballasted with sovereigns?”
“It’s so,” said Kettle, “or something very like that.”
“Your own?”
“Oh Lord, no. Just freight consigned to New Orleans, and brought here by that blow-up I was telling you about. I suppose that you gentlemen’ll have no objection to bearing a hand aboard o’ me now you are here? I’m a bit short-manned, and it ’ud be a pity to let freight like that rust for want of fingering.”
Hank grinned at his vis-à-vis, and then turned to the little skipper in the swivel-chair. “No,” he said, “I don’t see there’s anything wrong with that. I’m afraid, though, if we chipped in we couldn’t sign on so far as Noo Orleans.”
“New Orleans be sugared,” cried Captain Kettle. “Haven’t I spoke plain enough already? Don’t you understand all this racket’s a blessed swindle? The steamer’s going to have the name-plate on her engines altered, and the label on her stern changed, and a different pattern painted on her smoke-stacks, and a coat of gray clapped on her outside. And then, when she’s so bedevilled her own builder wouldn’t know her, we’ll run her round to some South American port where the least number of questions will be asked, and sell her for what she’ll fetch. But only the steamer, mark you. I reckon she’s carried the freight far enough. That’ll be struck out of her here.”
“You bet,” said Nutt, rubbing his hands. “We’ll corral the dollars for you right here till you come back. You shall have our niggers to s-s-stoke for you, if you can get ’em, and can manage ’em. But they’re fair toughs. Perhaps you’d w-w-weaken when you came to know ’em a bit.”
“I’d handle,” retorted Kettle, “a crew of old Nick’s firemen, raw out of hell, if I was put to it. Don’t you make any error. I’ve kept my end up with the worst crowds a man ever put to sea with. By James!” he went on, with a blow at the table, “by James! I’d handle you, Mr. Nutt, if you were signed aboard o’ me, till you couldn’t call your soul your own.”
“You’d w-w-which?” snarled Nutt, rising in his chair.