“I don’t blame you,” answered Jack. “Just the same, please remember that if we want to get away from this schooner soon, we’ve got to be mighty careful about what we do. If they discover us in any underhand work, they’ll come down on us like a thousand of brick.”
While the boys talked the matter over near the bow of the schooner, Captain Gilsen, Ferguson and Letts held a conference in the cabin of the Hildegarde.
“That sounds pretty good to me,” said the mate, after Ferguson had unfolded the plan already broached to the captain. “Of course, we might have a lot of trouble communicating with those boys’ folks, and more trouble getting them to pay up, but I think it could be done.”
“Of course it could be done!” replied Captain Gilsen, tugging on his moustache as usual. “I’ve been thinking it over hard, and I’m sure I know just where we can take ’em; a small island off the coast of Porto Rico. From there we can easily get into communication with the mainland and send out telegrams to their folks.”
“Those boys may cut up pretty wild when they understand what is going on,” remarked the mate.
“I don’t think they will,” answered Ferguson. “We’ve got ’em pretty well cowed.”
“How you going to keep them from pestering us about going ashore with the motor boat?”
“We’ll concoct a story that the revenue cutters are after us, and that we’ve got to keep pretty well out to sea,” was the reply. “We can tell ’em that it’s too rough ’way out there for the motor boat and that they’ll be safer aboard the schooner.”
Thereafter the three men went into an earnest discussion of the subject and finally decided that they would go into the scheme on equal shares and that each would assume an equal risk.
“We can easily buy up the whole crew,” said Letts. “I think a hundred dollars to each man will fix it up.”