“Boys,” said the Captain, addressing the dingy crowd, “is there ever a German among you?”
Dead silence for a moment, as though the hands were consulting their own hearts, and then a voice from back near the starboard alleyway: “No, there ain’t no Germans here.”
“Sam’s a Dutchman,” came another voice, and then the voice of Sam, protesting: “You lie! I vas a New Yorker.”
“Shut your mouths!” said Blood. “I’m an Englishman, or pretty near the same thing, and I’m captain of this hooker, which is owned by a German firm. In other words, it is owned by Mr. Wolff and Mr. Shiner, who are Germans. Well, my lads, news has just come over that cable we have picked up that war has been declared between England and Germany, so I have taken possession of the ship in the name of England, d’ye see? Which means that there’s lots of prize money for all of us if we can bring her safe into an English port.”
He waited for a moment after this announcement, but not a sound came from the crowd in front of them. It was filtering down through the thickness of their intelligences. It was an entirely new proposition that he had laid before them, and required time to find a response. They knew—God help them!—as little as he did of the horrible problems of international and maritime law that the Penguin was about to wind round herself as the silkworm winds a cocoon; but they knew the meaning of the word “money,” and it didn’t matter to them a rap whether it was prize money or not, as long as it could be changed for whisky and tobacco.
A little, wiry Nova Scotian was the first to respond.
“Go to it!” cried he. “Here’s to England and a pocketful of money!” He flung up his cap, and the action touched the rest off. They cheered—Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Latins, and Slavs—for such was their mixture. All joined in the shout.
MacBean alone, cautious and cool, made any question.
“Are you sure,” said he, when the shouting had ceased, “are you sure we’re in the right of this? I’m as willin’ as ony man to fight for England, but I’m no so sure about our poseetion as regards the ship.”
“Well, you will be soon,” said Blood. “This is my position: I’m not only going to take the ship, but I’m going to take anything German I come across on the high seas. Away back in the American Spanish War, I put out in a mud dredger from the Florida coast and took a mail steamer. We pretended we were a dynamite boat. There were seven thousand dollars in gold coin on board her, and we took it. Never mind where it went to——” A wild yell from the crowd. “We took it just as we are going to take any German money we come across. A chance like this doesn’t come in most lifetimes, and I’m not going to lose it.” Applause.