“That’s a fact,” said Candon.
“Maybe,” replied George. “All the same she’s done us out of our bunks, and what are you going to do with her, anyway? Here you are tied up with a girl, you’ve taken her from her mother, if that old Jew woman was her mother, ripped her clean out of her environment, she’s on our hands. If she doesn’t go back to that lot, what are we to do with her?”
Hank got peppery. “Why in the nation didn’t you think of that before we took her,” asked he.
“Why you know well enough,” answered the other, “we thought that lot had stolen her away from her people, naturally I thought we’d put her back again with her people, whereas, now, look where we are. Suppose even we do tame her, as you call it, and she goes straight, who’s to feed her and keep her?”
“Why, Bud,” said Hank, “we’ll manage somehow. Look at you with all your dollars, what better use could you make of a few of them, and we’ll help.”
“Yes, we’ll help,” said Candon, forgetting the fact that he was due for either the penitentiary or hoofing it to Callao from the Bay of Whales. “We’ll help and the three of us will make out somehow.”
The millionaire said nothing for a moment. He was about to fly out at the cool way these benefactors of humanity were disposing of his credit and coin. Then he calmed down and said nothing and went forward to get some of the “rice and truck the Chinks feed on” for his companions, also a beaker of water.
The weather was warm, so warm that sleeping on deck was no penance and Charley being called to the wheel the Wear Jack and her strange cargo snored on south—ever south—under the night of stars.