As soon as it was daylight Stubbs had a talk with the mutineers.
“’Course,” he informed them, “’course ye knows the medicine ye gets fer mutiny on the high seas. Every yeller dog of ye can look for’ard to a prison sentence of twenty years or so. As for Splinter––yer leader––I can ’member the time I’d ha’ had the pleasure er watchin’ him squirm from a yardarm without any further preliminaries. As ’tis, maybe he’ll be ’lowed to think it over th’ rest of his life in a cell.”
He kept them on a diet of crackers and corned beef and they never opened their lips in protest. Every day they were brought up morning and afternoon for drill. After this the three men divided the night into 165 the three shifts so that at least one of them was always upon guard. But the men were thoroughly cowed, and evidently hoped, by good behavior, to reëstablish themselves before port was reached.
It was during these night watches that Wilson had many long talks with Stubbs––talks that finally became personal and which in the end led him, by one of those quick impulses which make in lives for a great deal of good or wrecking harm, to confide in him the secret of the treasure. This he did at first, however, without locating it nearer than “Within five hundred miles of where we’re going,” and with nothing in his narrative to associate the idol with the priest. Truth to tell, Wilson was disappointed at the cool way in which Stubbs listened. But the latter explained his indifference somewhat when he remarked, removing the clay pipe from his mouth:
“M’ boy, I’m sorter past my treasure hunting days. Once’t I dug up ’bout an acre of sand on one of the islands of the South seas an’ it sorter took all th’ enthusiasm, as ye might say, fer sech sport outern me. We didn’t git nothin’ but clam shells, as I remember. Howsomever, I wouldn’t git nothin’ but clam shells outern a gold mine. Thet’s th’ way m’ luck runs. Maybe th’ stuff’s there, maybe it ain’t; but if I goes, it ain’t.”
He added, a moment later:
“Howsomever, I can see how, in order to find the girl, you has to go. The dago gent––if he lives––will make fer that right off. I’ve heern o’ women with 166 the gift o’ conjurin’––like seventh sons o’ seventh sons––but I ain’t ever met with sech. I dunno now––I dunno now but what I might consider your proposition if we comes outern this right and the cap’n here can spare me. I can’t say this minute as how I takes much stock in it, as ye might say. But I tell ye fair, I’m glad to help a pardner and glad to have a try, fer the sake of the girl if nothin’ more. I don’t like ter see an older man play no sech games as this man––who d’ ye say his name is?”
“Sorez.”
“Maybe we can find out more ’bout him down here. Anyhow, we’ll talk it over, boy, when we gits through this. In the meanwhile yer secret is safe.”
Wilson felt better at the thought that there was now someone with whom he could talk freely of the treasure. It became the main topic of conversation during the watch which he usually sat out with Stubbs, after his own.