“What do you mean by that?” asked Billy, the ecstatic expression on his face giving way to one of soberness.
“Just this,” returned Bobby: “If Mooloo should once know that we had found it, the lives of all of us wouldn’t perhaps be worth a plugged nickel.”
“You don’t think he’d murder us?” asked Mouser, in awed tones.
“Who can tell?” returned Bobby. “There are thousands of men among people that we call civilized that would kill us as readily as they would a fly to get this money away from us. How safe do you think we’d be in New York or any large city if thugs or gunmen knew that we had this with us? And if that is true there where they’d have to take chances with the law, how much more easily might it happen here. We haven’t any way to defend ourselves, and Mooloo with his spears could kill us easily. There wouldn’t have to be any explaining. He’d simply say, if he said anything at all, that we’d been lost in a blizzard, and the Eskimos would grunt, and that’s all there’d be to it. He’d slip our bodies into the sea and they’d never be found.”
The boys shuddered at the thought.
“Do you think that Mooloo is that kind of a fellow?” asked Billy.
“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t,” replied Bobby. “But many a bad man becomes a murderer at the sight of gold, and it won’t do to take any chances. They say opportunity often makes the thief, and I suppose the same thing is true of other crimes. And certainly there couldn’t be any easier kind of opportunity than Mooloo would have if he wanted to take it.”
“But how on earth are we to get the money away from here without Mooloo knowing about it?” asked Fred, in great perplexity.
“That’s something we’ve got to figure out,” answered Bobby. “But just now the thing we’ve got to do is to board up this place again and do it quickly. Billy, you go up on deck and keep a lookout for Mooloo. Give us the tip if you see him coming, and we’ll hustle into some other part of the ship. Lively now, boys.”
They took another long look at the treasure and then reluctantly closed the chest. Then they set to work to repair the battered wall as well as they could. It was not a very workmanlike job, but the walls were so seamed and cracked anyway that by the time they had finished the repaired part did not differ greatly from the rest, and they trusted that it would escape detection.