The two brawny hands clasped, and the friends greeted each other with remarkable cordiality; and, as they did so, they laughed heartily, and the mate almost shouted:
“Captain, but it was a good trick!”
“So it was; and I give you the credit of inventing it. I never would have thought of it.”
“Shake again; and now to work.”
The mate had deposited some of the oysters brought up on the bank, and they were carefully opened. They were eight in number, and there was not found a single pearl among them.
In all probability the entire lot which were carried away upon the schooner were not worth as much as 139 the same quantity of bivalves from Chesapeake Bay. In short, this was not the pearl-oyster bed which had brought the two friends the greater part of the way around the globe. Suspecting––or, rather, knowing––the evil intentions of the mutineers, Abe Storms proposed the ruse, by which the visit was made to the wrong place. The mutineers themselves were outwitted, and, under the belief that they were carrying away a cargo of fabulous wealth, they did not wait to make an examination of the mollusks until they were well out to sea.
When they should open and examine them they were not likely to suspect the trick, but would think that the whole journey was a failure, and the three left on the island were, in reality, worse off than themselves.
And yet the true bed of oyster-pearls remained to be visited.
“It is possible they may suspect something and come back again,” said the mate, “but it is hardly probable.”
“Are they likely to send any friends to take us off?” asked the captain, with a quizzical look.