“If you’re in dead earnest, Jim, I beg your pardon. This damn mortgage has got on my nerves purty bad. Heave over your proposition, and get it off your chest.”
“I shall have to exact one promise from you.”
The Captain took one step toward the Elder’s chair, his swarthy old face alight with anticipation and hope. One promise! He would give a hundred, and keep them all. The Captain was fine-looking at all times, every span of him a man and a seaman. But when his face was bright with eagerness, and his muscular body tense with anticipation, he was superb. To those less steeled against human magnetism than Mr. Fox, he was irresistible at such times. The Elder merely waved him back to the vacated chair.
“That one promise will bind us both,” he 236 said coldly. “In fact, it is to your interest as well as to mine to make it. You will not see it at first, but time will prove that I am right in asking it.”
“I’ll promise anything that’s reasonable if you’ll only swing me the job of skipper.”
“Very well.” The Elder began to shuffle some papers with deft fingers.
“But that there mortgage, Jim, is soon due, and–––”
“We shall not speak of that for the present. There are other ways of disposing of mortgages than by paying them,” he remarked, striking a match and holding it significantly beneath a piece of paper which the Captain recognized as the one displayed by the lawyer yesterday.
Captain Pott did not take his eyes from the face of the man across the table. A suspicion was forcing its way into his mind, and it was as unpleasant as it was unwelcome.
“How do I know that you’ll keep your end of the promise, Jim?”