“What’s the matter now?” asked Jude.
“What’s the matter? What did you say I was dead for? Didn’t I tell you to say I was down with smallpox?”
“Well, what’s the difference?”
“Why, you mutt, wouldn’t you have been snivelin’ and cryin’ if I was dead? And you handed that yam out to him as ca’m as if you were talking of a tomcat! I didn’t believe you myself.”
“Why, I told him you was dead a week,” cried Jude. “D’you think I’d be snivelin’ and cryin’ a week if you was dead? Lord! what you do think of yourself!”
Satan did not reply. He was thinking that he had made a false move and that Jude had put the cap on the business. Cark would be certain now that there was something hidden on the island.
Satan was on the horns of a dilemma. One horn was the cache of provisions containing a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of stuff, the other horn was the old wreck that might contain nothing.
To hang on here was useless, for Cark would hang on too. Even if Cark went away, he would be sure to come back to hunt.
He sat with his back to the bulwarks, chewing and thinking. Then, heedless whether he was seen or not from the Juan Bango, he rose to his feet and leaned with his back against the rail He had come to a decision. Jude, watching him, said nothing, and Ratcliffe waited without a word. This little sea comedy interested him intensely, and all the more for its setting of loneliness and its background of blue sea and quarreling gulls.
It was to Ratcliffe that Satan spoke first “Look here!” said Satan. “You’re standin’ out of this, aren’t you?”