“But you don’t know all I done.”
“I guess I do, pretty near.”
“No, you don’t. I began plannin’ to do some underhand work, the minute I heard what the cap’n was going to do for you. Whenever I git a drink in me, I’m ripe for anything. That’s why I sampled that brandy I was bringing to the cap’n. I wanted to nerve myself up for what I was plannin’ to do. I listened to you when you was reading the sealed orders. I heard it all, and I knew I had something then that was valuable. As soon as you and Ferral left the Grampus, I got away, too. As I stepped out o’ the sailboat at the landing, this Cap’n Fingal spoke me. We went into a drinkin’ place by the wharf and we spilled a lot of rum down our throats. That was enough to set us both going. I told Fingal what I knowed, and he told me a lot about himself. He said he’d make it right with me if I could get you disabled so you couldn’t manage the Grampus, and would have to be left behind. That, as Fingal and I both figgered, would put me in command. It was to handle you rough, and land you in a hospital, that we trailed you to the consulate. When we failed there, we come back to the landing, and Fingal says for me to jump aboard his schooner with him and then lay for the Grampus up the Izaral. I told Fingal I thought it was the Rio Dolce, but he laughed and said if you’d read it that way you was stringing me.
“I was about ready to quit on the business, after what happened at the consulate, but Fingal got more rum down me, talked about how I’d been imposed on, and told what a fine thing it would be if we could make you fail in the work you had come down here to do.
“That kind of pleased me, too. If I could have fixed it so you’d fall down on the job the cap’n had laid out for you, then, I thought, the cap’n would think he had made a mistake in not putting me up as boss of the submarine. Funny how a feller’s idees will git squeegeed that away as soon as he gets a little grog under hatches.
“Well, anyway, I went with Fingal. We left the schooner at Port Livingstone, and Fingal told the mate of the schooner to go down to Barrios and stay there till Fingal joined him. Then we stole the motor boat and hustled up the river to that outfit of ragamuffins that’s hopin’ to grab the country and turn it over to another dictator. I was disgusted with the lot of ’em, and with old Pitou more’n any of the rest. I wouldn’t go near Coleman, and when our information worked out, and Jordan and the half-breed was captured, I felt sore enough at myself; but it was Speake that cut me up the worst. Him and me had always been friendly on the Grampus, and there I was, after betraying him into the hands of his enemies. Oh, I tell you, Bob, I felt bad enough to go down to the river and jump in. Then, when old Pitou made up his mind to send the prisoners down the river in the launch to another of his hangouts where he thought they’d be safer, and app’inted me as one of the guards to go with ’em and see that none of ’em got away, I felt about as respectable as a horse thief. Of course, when you bumped us on the bottom with the submarine, I couldn’t sink into the river and never come up; oh, no, I just naturally had to land right on the deck, without so much as getting my feet wet. I don’t know how I ever can go back to Belize and look the cap’n in the face. That’s honest.”
Cassidy’s regret for what he had done was so profound that it made a deep impression on Bob.
“You’re not a bad fellow at heart, Cassidy,” said he. “Captain Nemo, junior, knows that, as well as all the rest of us. Besides, it was a little bit rough to jump a fellow like me over the head of an old hand like you, and——”
“It wasn’t!” growled Cassidy; “not a bit of it!” He lifted his fierce eyes. “Think I’ve got the head to do what you done? No, not in a thousand years! The cap’n knowed what he was about, and I didn’t have sense enough to see it.”
“Well, you buck up and go to the captain. You didn’t cause any great harm, anyhow, the way things have come out. The captain will be so pleased over what’s been accomplished that he’ll overlook a good deal. I’ll say a good word for you, Cassidy.”