He had found the task of finding a ship a difficult one. Ten tons of gold was not freight that would ordinarily be found in the possession of a man of Wilkins’s appearance, and the fact that he wanted to get it out of the country secretly was abundant proof that he had come by it illegally. To explain the true nature of the stuff he wanted to ship, was to risk arrest by the police on the one hand, and robbery and murder by those who aided him on the other.
Yet it was practically impossible to conceal the fact that it was gold with which he wished to escape. Its mere weight would almost inevitably betray its character, for it was not credible that he should be willing to pay the sum necessary to induce a captain to violate the laws and risk his ship in order to carry off a few tons of lead, which was about the only conceivable substance of approximately equal weight.
Gold, of course, might be so packed in boxes too large for it, as to conceal its relative weight, but the Wilkins brothers had no means at hand to enable them to do this.
Under these circumstances, it was not surprising that it took Wilkins practically all of the ten days he had supposed might be required to make his arrangements. He made them at last, however, with a villainous-looking captain, who drove a very hard bargain, and whom Wilkins suspected would turn robber if given the ghost of an opportunity. Neither he nor Tom, however, shrank from taking risks.
Meanwhile, Tom Wilkins had discovered Florence’s disappearance but had found himself helpless. Florence had taken the sloop’s only small boat, and Wilkins, unable to swim, found himself hopelessly marooned, unable to get ashore except by calling for aid. Although he had no nerves to speak of, and was ready at any time to fight his weight in wild-cats, even he found the situation appalling. Alone in a strange seaport, unable to speak a word of the language, under ban of the police, tied by the leg to a pile of gold, and deserted by his companions, a weaker man would have attempted to sail away despite his ignorance in regard to the management of the boat. But Tom Wilkins was not that sort. He would stick till the last minute.
Florence’s desertion was the hardest to bear. He really loved the girl, and he had almost persuaded himself that she loved him; believing this, he found it very hard to conclude that her absence spelled treachery, as it obviously seemed to do. Rather, knowing how she chafed against the long confinement and remembering her hysterical fit of the night before, he clung to the hope that she had merely gone ashore and would soon be back.
But as the hours wore on and she did not return, he was forced to believe that she had deserted and perhaps betrayed him. He had taken her as a partner in his flight when he had expected to reach safety easily and quickly. If he had had any idea of what was before him, he would have gone without her and sent for her after the toil and danger of the adventure was over. But, having taken her, he expected her to stand by him, and to find that she was a “quitter,” the thing he despised most on earth, hurt him. According to his ideas, his own conduct in leaving the yacht was not “quitting,” but frank piracy, a thing which he by no means held in the same disesteem.
Bill’s arrival did not mend matters. Arriving at the shore, his sailor’s eyes quickly missed the dinghy that had trailed behind the sloop and he promptly hired a shore boat and had himself rowed out.
As he came alongside, Tom, who had been watching from below, came on deck to meet him, but showed no interest in the success of his errand.
Bill, however, did not notice the other’s moodiness.