“And certain I am. I’ve got the chaps you want.”
“Now look here,” said Bone, “don’t you take on the job unless you’re more than sure. Ginnell isn’t no boob to play up and down with; he’d set in, mostlike, to wreck the bar if he thought I was playin’ cross with him.”
“Don’t fret,” said Harman. “I’ll be there, and now fork out a dollar advance, for I’ll have some treatin’ to do.”
Bone produced the money. It changed hands, and he departed, while Harman pursued his way along the wharf toward his friend.
Blood was sitting on an empty crate.
“Well,” said he, as the other drew up, “what business?”
Harman told every word of his conversation with Bone, and, without any addition to it, waited for the other to speak.
“Well, you’ve got the dollar,” said Blood at last, “and there’s some satisfaction in that. I’m not the chap to take five cents off a chap by false pretenses same’s you’ve done with Bone, but Bone’s not a man by all accounts; he’s a crimp in man’s clothes, and if all the old whalemen he’s filled with balloon juice and sent to perdition could rise up and shout, I reckon his name’d be known in two hemispheres.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Harman. “What was that you were saying about false pretenses? I haven’t used no false pretenses. They ain’t things I’m in the habit of usin’ between man and man.”
“Well, what have you been using? You told me a moment ago you’d agreed to furnish two hands to this chap’s order for five dollars apiece and a dollar advance.”