“No, they haven’t,” replied the Captain. “And why? Simply because I’ve been at Shiner all the past week with a rope’s end, so to say. I’m blessed if the blighter didn’t want to economise on buoys! ‘Two will be enough,’ says he; ‘it’s only a short job we are on, and they are three hundred dollars apiece.’ He said that right to my face. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘it’s none of my business, but if you want to drop the job, whatever it is, in the middle, and run a thousand miles to the nearest port for a ten-cent buoy, you’ll find your economy has been misplaced. You will that.’ So he caved in on the buoys. Then we had an argument over the grapnel rope. He wanted to take two miles of all hemp. I wanted five miles of wire wove. I got it, but only after a mighty tough struggle. The grapnels are good, but they went with the ship, and they’d been properly laid up in paraffin; not a speck on them. Then the Kelvin sounder was out of order. Yes, they’d have sailed with it like that only for me, and it cost them something to have it put right.”
“What I’m thinking,” said Harman, “is that this expedition is costing a good deal of money.”
“It’s costing all of five hundred dollars a day.”
“What I’m thinking,” went on Harman, “is that the profits to come out of whatever they are going to do must be huge, big profits to cover the expenses, and I’ve taken notice that when chaps are ketched going on the crooked where money is concerned, they always gets a bigger doing from the law the bigger the money is. It’s this way: if a chap nails a suit of clothes, or a ham, he don’t get as much as a chap that nicks a motor boat, shall we say, and the chap that nicks a motor boat don’t——”
“Oh, shut up!” said the Captain. “We’re in for it, whatever it is, and our only hope’s our innocence if we’re caught. We don’t know anything; we are only obeying the orders of the owners. Not that that will have much weight if we are caught, but we’re not going to be. I’ve a firm belief in that slippery eel of a Shiner, much as I dislike him; and this chap Wolff doesn’t seem a fool, either. They’re not the sort of fellows to run their skins into much danger.”
“What do you think it is?” asked Harman.
“Think what is?”
“This game of theirs.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think they are going to pick up a cable, cut it, and tap it.”