“Yes; unless you prefer to be almost certain of losing your fight for the great fortune. For Dalton, of course, knows that you can send a set of the papers by mail. He’ll feel like taking the same desperate chance in order to have a better chance of getting in ahead of you.”
“By mail—even registered mail?” groaned Mr. Seaton. “It seems an awful—desperate chance to take. Yet––”
“Prepare a duplicate set of the papers,” proposed Tom Halstead, “and, if you’ll trust me, I’ll board the first Rio-bound steamer that we meet, and go through for you. I’ll give you every guarantee that’s possible to find your people in Rio and turn the papers over to them.”
“Will you?” demanded Seaton, peering eagerly into his young skipper’s eyes.
“Then you’ll trust me to go as your messenger to Rio?”
“Yes, in a minute, Halstead! Yet I’m thinking of the great danger you’d be running. At 150 this moment Terrero’s spies must be plentiful in Rio Janeiro. Why, even every steamer that leaves New York for Brazil may carry his men aboard, alert, watchful and deadly. You don’t know what a man like Terrero is like. The constant danger to you––”
“Constant danger,” laughed Tom Halstead, softly, “is something that most men learn readily to face. Otherwise, wars would be impossible.”
“But that is very different,” retorted Powell Seaton, quickly. “In war men have the constant elbow-touch, the presence and support of comrades. But you would be alone—one against hundreds, perhaps, at the very instant when you set foot ashore in Brazil.”
“I’ll take the chance, if you let me,” declared Captain Tom. “But, now, sir, you’re losing time. Why don’t you go below, get writing materials, and start in earnest to get out the duplicate papers?”
“I will,” nodded the charter-man. “Should I change my mind, it will be easy enough to burn the sheets after I have written them.”