“We shall be the two richest men in America!”
Captain Bergen was in that state of intense nervous sensibility in which his perceptions were unnaturally acute, and he felt, on the instant the words struck his ear, that they had a frightful meaning.
The two continued their cautious conference, but the sail favored acoustics no longer, and the listener did not catch another syllable.
“They mean to kill Abe and me,” he said to himself, “and run away with the pearls. If they had determined to be honest men, and we had secured any particular amount of wealth, they would have been rewarded liberally. Forewarned is forearmed.”
Captain Bergen was a brave man, and there was no 84 fear of his displaying any shrinking in the crisis which was evidently close at hand.
Once more he raised the glass to his eye and gazed toward the inlet of the atoll. During the few minutes that he had spent in looking down upon the deck and listening, the schooner had made good speed, and the island was less than a half mile distant. When the instrument was pointed toward the place, he saw clearly and unmistakably the figure of the mast standing beside the inlet, where it had been placed years before by Grebbens and his companions.
This, then, was Pearl Island, as the New Englanders had named it; and here it was that the bed of pearl oysters of fabulous richness was to be found.
Something like a feeling of depression came over the captain when he realized that the land of promise had risen on his vision at last. For days, weeks and months this had been the one absorbing theme of his mind. He had dreamed of it until he was almost, if not quite, a monomaniac, and he had built air-castles until the whole sky of his vision was filled with gorgeous structures. And it should be added, in justice to both Bergen and Storms, that these structures were creditable to the builders; for, realizing in the fullest sense that about all they could extract personally from riches was their own board and lodging, they had perfected a number of colossal schemes for 85 benefiting humanity; indeed, charity was the foundation-stone of all these castles. And now, after these long months of waiting, he seemed to see the wealth lying within his grasp, and something like a reaction came to him.
“Is it worth all this?” he asked himself. “Is the gain likely to pay for the peril in which we have placed ourselves?”
Still further, the ominous words which he had overheard impressed him vividly with the impending danger in which he and his mate were placed. He saw now that in taking Brazzier and Redvignez he had taken two mutineers aboard, and two who, in all probability, had won the giant African, Pomp, over to their side.