“Maybe not,” I says, “but I like it in moderation. Say about a hundred dollars a day to spend. Nothing big or extravagant, but just that.”
“I s’pose,” says he, “you’d buy a hundred dollars’ worth of peanuts and chocolate ice-cream soda every day.”
“All but Wednesdays and Saturdays,” I says, kind of irritated, because he thought he was so smart; “those two days I’d spend it for crackers and cheese.”
He just shrugged his shoulders and squinted down the bay. “Say,” says he, “what became of that document bag?”
“Must have gone overboard,” says I.
“Don’t believe it,” says he. “I’m going to have another look.”
“Anyhow,” says I, “it’ll be something to do.”
So we started in to search, and we hunted high and low, every place you’d think a leather case might have dropped when it was thrown, but not a sign.
“It hit up forward some place,” says Catty, so we went up in front of the bridge and looked all over again. There wasn’t anything there but the windlasses for hoisting the anchors and a couple of capstan bars and some cleats and a sort of a skylight which gave air and light to the crew’s quarters forward of the engine room. This was closed.
“Couldn’t have got in there,” says I.