“No,” said I.
“Gordon-Nasmyth would haf told me long ago what it ees for we haf come.”
“I’ll tell you now,” I said. “We are going to lay in as close as we can to those two heaps of stuff—you see them?—under the rock. Then we are going to chuck all our ballast overboard and take those in. Then we’re going home.”
“May I presume to ask—is eet gold?”
“No,” I said incivilly, “it isn’t.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s stuff—of some commercial value.”
“We can’t do eet,” he said.
“We can,” I answered reassuringly.
“We can’t,” he said as confidently. “I don’t mean what you mean. You know so liddle—But—dis is forbidden country.”