“The first thing to be done,” continued Benton, as they all gathered about the table, “is to figure on the cost of the expedition. In this, as in everything else, we need the ‘sinews of war.’ We’ve got to lay in supplies, purchase a diving suit, charter a sailing vessel after we reach San Domingo and lots of other things. It can’t be done under five thousand dollars and we’d better figure on ten. How about it?”
“That’s all right,” answered Phil promptly. “We’ve talked it over among ourselves and estimated that it would be somewhere between those two amounts. A year ago it might have stumped us a bit, but the reward we got from the bank for the capture of Muggs Murray and the generous way in which Uncle Sam treated us after we had helped to run down the counterfeiters has put us on Easy Street.”
“Good,” said Benton. “I have a little wad of my own stowed away, and we’ll go in on an even basis. There are five of us—that is, if your friend Elwood comes in with us—and that will make from one to two thousand each that we will have to put up. And of course it is understood that we share alike in all the profits of the expedition.”
“Seems to me that you ought to have a larger share than the rest of us,” objected Phil. “You’re the one that got the papers, without which there wouldn’t be any trip at all.”
“Not a bit of it,” protested Benton. “The papers wouldn’t do me any good unless I had fellows like you to help me realize on them. No, it’s got to be ‘hoss and hoss,’ share and share alike. That is,” he added, with his whimsical smile, “if there’s anything to be shared. We’re counting our chickens before they are hatched.”
“I suppose the first leg of our journey will be from here to some of the West India Islands,” said Dick.
“Yes,” answered Benton. “I figure that we’d better go from here to New York by rail, and then by one of the regular steamers to San Domingo. When we reach there, it will be up to us to charter a small fast sailing vessel in which we can cruise around in the Caribbean while we’re trying to locate the old pirate’s island. We’ll drop down to the neighborhood of latitude 14, longitude 81, keeping our eyes open for any island whose skyline looks like the teeth of a saw.”
“How about navigating the sloop?” asked Phil.
“Leave that to me,” responded Benton. “I thought one time before I joined the marines of going into the merchant service and studied for the position of mate. I got my papers too and can handle a ship with the best of them. But the marine service appealed to me more strongly because of the greater chances of adventure, and so I passed the other up. But I haven’t let myself get rusty, and I’ve had a lot of practical experience. I’m as much at home on a boat as I am in the barracks. But how about you young fellows? Know anything about sailing?”
“Not on the ocean,” replied Phil, “but we’ve done considerable cruising on the Great Lakes, which are the next thing to the sea itself. We know enough about ropes and sails to understand orders and to obey them promptly. If you’ll act as captain, we think we can qualify as crew, especially on as small a boat as we expect to handle.”