Then he dashed back into the saloon.
“It’s the Port of Amsterdam,” cried Harman. “It’s the salvage ship; she’s there droppin’ her anchor. We’re done, we’re dished—and we foolin’ like this and they crawlin’ up on us.”
“And you said she’d only do eight knots!” cried Blood.
Ginnell flung the revolver on the floor. Every trace of the recent occurrence had vanished, and the three men thought no more of one another than a man thinks of petty matters in the face of dissolution. Gunderman was outside; that was enough for them.
“Boys,” said Ginnell, “ain’t there no way out with them dollars? S’pose we howk them ashore?”
“Cliffs two hundred foot high!” said Harman. “Not a chanst. We’re dished.”
Said Blood: “There’s only one thing left. We’ll walk the dollars down to the boat and row off with them. Of course we’ll be stopped, still there’s the chance that Gunderman may be drunk or something. It’s one chance in a hundred billion; it’s the only one.”
But Gunderman was not drunk, nor were his boat party, and the court-martial he held on the beach in broken English and with the sack of coin beside him as chief witness would form a bright page of literature had one time to record it.