“Because it wouldn’t be common-sense to wait till that steamer comes gliding up, and takes possession of the Teal. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes; you would all be made prisoners, and I should be free,” cried Fitz, laughing. “My word, Master Poole, I don’t want you to have a topper first, but I’d let you see then what it is to be a prisoner aboard the Silver Teal.”
“Oh yes, of course, I know,” replied Poole mockingly. “But you don’t know everything. When I asked you if you knew what it meant it was this, that our cargo would go into the wrong hands and about ruin Don Ramon’s cause.”
“Well, what does that matter?”
“Everything. Ramon, who has been striking for freedom and all that’s good and right, would be beaten, and the old President Don Villarayo would carry on as before. He is as bad a tyrant as ever was at the head of affairs, and it’s to help turn him out of the chair that my father and his Spanish friends are making this venture.”
“Well, that’s nothing to me,” said Fitz. “I am on the side of right.”
“Well, that is the side of right.”
“Oh no,” said Fitz. “According to the rule of these things that’s the side of right that has the strongest hold.”
“Bah!” said Poole. “That would never do, unless it is when we get the strongest hold, and that we mean to do.”
“Well, I hope old Burgess, as you call him, won’t run this wretched schooner crash on to a rock. You might as well hand me out a life-belt, in case.”