“Take your guns with you, if you like,” I told the captain. “But go down there as cool as you can. Give off your orders as if you didn’t notice anything. And be sure to throw out that hint about why you want the boxes made. This is no time to bull this game of ours.”
Captain Holstrom was no fool, and he knew when a man was in dead earnest. I pushed him and he went. I’ll have to confess that he qualified as a good actor when he arrived on the main deck.
I was looking down from the bridge, and I saw the men of the crew exchange winks and grins behind the captain’s back.
The model crew of the crack ship in all the world could not have shown such willing obedience. They went to their work on the rush. Saws rasped and hammers banged. There was clattering of iron and hum of industry.
Captain Holstrom left the work in charge of his mates, and came back to his state-room to resume his watch over the treasure. I closeted myself with him.
“Now, we’ll get down to the bed-rock of the proposition, Captain Holstrom. We have agreed—you and I—that Keedy is about due here. We don’t know who will come with him. But we can be mighty sure that they’ll be no friends of ours. We’d be playing the parts of idiots to keep that gold on board the Zizania. But there isn’t a harbor nearer than Acapulco where we can land it; we can’t lug it ashore on the open coast through the breakers; we can’t dodge all around the Pacific Ocean with it. Right now, there’s another complication besides Keedy and his crowd. We have still more desperate thieves right here with us. The mates and Shank are safe. To-night the five of us will get busy, pack that gold in the strong boxes, and drop it overboard.”
“Great guns!” groaned the captain. “I said you was crazy, and now I’m sure of it. Dig it all up, and then throw it away again! No, let’s not put it in the boxes. Let’s hoot and holler and cavort around the deck and heave it overboard, one ingot at a time, so as to see who can make the biggest splash. Come on—let’s have fun!” he raved.
“I am far from being crazy, Captain Holstrom,” I informed him, giving him the hard eye so steadily that he blinked. “To each box we’ll hitch chain long enough to reach to the surface. That chain will have rope cable—say ten feet of it—hitched to the end, and the rope will be buoyed to a small spar. The box and all the chain will lie on bottom. The small spar with its rope cable will swim well under the surface of the water. In case we want to raise the box we can catch the rope and spar with a rake, or else drag for it with a chain between two boats.”
“I hate to see that gold go under water again,” mourned Captain Holstrom.
“It’s that or stand by and see mutineers lug it off or lawyers divide it.”