“I’ve sailed more than one voyage with you, Martin Alonzo.”
“So you have. Well?”
“I never gave trouble?”
“Never.”
“And don’t intend to now. I shipped of my own free will, or to please you, which comes to the same thing; but I will say I don’t like the voyage—I don’t like it. ’Tisn’t natural. I hoped we were going back, I did, like all the others here, and I’d like nothing better than to go back. Of course if you say you are going on, that settles it, for I know you; but don’t you think, Martin Alonzo, it would be fairer to let those that don’t want to go get off at the Canaries? I say what I say to be fair all around.”
It was the mildest sort of protest, but it was the best the old fellow could do with the eye of Martin Alonzo fixed sternly on him all the time.
“No, it wouldn’t be fairer to let them go,” was the answer. “If I did, I could get no others to take their places. Besides, they are a parcel of children who will thank me some day for having made their fortunes in spite of them. Why, men, we are going to find a country where the houses are roofed with plates of gold and silver. Doesn’t that tempt ye? eh?”
“We’re going to perdition,” interrupted a surly voice.
“Bah!” said Martin Alonzo, flashing his eye over the men to find the owner of the voice, but not succeeding. “Perdition! Do you think I would like that any better than you? Have I not as much—more to lose?”
“Life is life to one as to another,” said a voice.