Micky McMasters rubbed a bristly chin reflectively. He stared at Mike Monkey’s faded outfit. He swung his gaze to where Red Landyard stood on the forecastle deck, directing a gang of coolies who were clearing away wreckage which had fallen about the capstan.
“This Russian,” he said with an anxious glance at the dark outlines of the shore, “this man who hired us at a thousand rubles a week is some kind of a big labor captain or prince. The coolies salute him. The two Tatars standing guard at that shed ashore bowed when he spoke to them. There’s a whackin’ mystery ’ere!”
“Ah thought ye would get yer foot in it when ah saw ye chinnin’ with that Russian on the mud flat. He is a smuggler!”
“No! ’E don’t look like one.”
“Looks is only skin deep. He ought to be skinned—with his thousand rubles a week.”
“’E ’as nobody to navigate the ship, and the tea ’as got to be taken hover the western Pacific.”
“Tay? Ye are daft? D’ye call that tay?”
Mike Monkey pointed a scornful finger at the boxes piled around the fore-hatch. He spat to the bridge-deck.
“That ain’t tay! That’s opium or hashish or fireworks of some sort. Ah never saw tay boxes with Russian letters on them.”
“There is good tea grown in some parts of Russia.”