“‘Oh, don’t they?’ he says. ‘Well, I believes they do—sometimes. Just you stop here a minute, Joe,’ he says; ‘I’ll be back in a brace of shakes.’
“So off he goes, and presently I hears him talkin’ to the cook in the galley, very earnest. By-and-by he comes out again, and he says—
“‘Joe,’ says he, ‘do you know what the skipper’s pokin’ the ship away up here into this outlandish part of the Pacific for?’
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’ve been told as he wants to get a cargo of sandal-wood for the China market.’
“‘Nothin’ else?’ says he.
“‘He never told me as he was after anythin’ else,’ I says, lookin’ very knowin’.
“‘No,’ he says, ‘I don’t suppose he ever did; but somebody else might, mightn’t they?’
“Says I, ‘What’s the use of all this backin’ and fillin’? I see you knows somethin’ as I thought nobody in the fo’c’s’le knowed anything about but myself. Now, if you’ve got anything to say about it, out with it; and if you haven’t, let’s talk about somethin’ else.’
“Says he, ‘Did you ever know anybody by the name of George Moore?’
“‘Yes,’ says I, ‘I did.’ And I had it on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘And a more worthless scamp I never wishes to meet with.’ But I didn’t, because it come to me to remember, just in time, that if these here chaps knowed anything about the treasure, ’twas most likely through George that they’d come to know it. So I says, ‘He was steward aboard here until the skipper sacked him in Sydney.’