“Which sort?”
“The sort that will kill you if you hit its pride, even if it has to kill itself. I expect that time in the foc’sle with Jake was pure hell’s delight to him, feeling he was making us miserable and being miserable himself. I expect he’s gloating at this present minute over us reading this letter and being unable to get at him to make things up. Gloating with pleasure, yet in hell all the time.”
“Why, Bud,” said Hank, “you’re talking as if you knew the man’s mind inside out.”
“Maybe, I do,” said Bud. “Maybe I’m not such a fool as I look, but I take him as a discontented man who’s made a mess of his life, and nicking on him and calling him names like that just at that moment, finished the business.”
Tommie nodded. All the same she guessed the case to be a bit more complicated than that.
“Go on reading,” she said.
George went on.
“I sat down on one of the couches thinking what to do and I heard the Chinks pow-wowing away on deck. Talking maybe of how to get rid of me. Time went on and the clock went round to twelve, that’s two hours after I boarded her, then Charlie came to the skylight and hailed me. He said they’d taken the ship and had got the stuff we were digging for. He asked me would I navigate her if they let me out. I told him to go to hell. He went off and time went on and then I heard them handling the halyards and getting in the hook. They didn’t shout at their work, went silent as cats. Then I felt the ship under way.
“Morning came. I daren’t sleep or they’d have been down on me, but I had food from the lazarette and there was water in the swinging bottle.
“Charlie came again that day to know if I would help work the ship. He said they meant to beach her on the Panama coast at a place they knew and offered me a share in the boodle. I told him I’d fire the ship first and he went away.