“Let us talk it over quietly, Louis. But take a drink first,” and he handed the captain some rum-and-water. Hendry drank it in gloomy silence, and waited till the supercargo had taken some himself.
“Now, Louis, here is the position. We can't go to Ponapé, for Atkins will very likely get there as soon as we could, for with light winds such as we have had to-day he would soon pass us with six oars, deep as he is in the water. And even if we got there a week before him, we might not find a ship bound to Sydney or anywhere else.”
“But there is a chance of finding one.”
“True, there is a chance. But there is also a chance of Atkins's boat being picked up at sea this very day, or the next, or a month hence, and he and his crowd reaching Sydney long before us. And I don't want to run my neck into the noose that will be waiting there. Neither do you, I suppose?”
“Why in the name of hell do you keep on talking about that?” burst from the captain; “don't I know it as well as you?”
“Very well, I won't allude to such an unpleasant possibility—I should say certainty—again,” replied Chard coolly. “But as I was saying, the chances are against us. If we kept on for Ponapé we should either be collared the moment we put foot ashore, or before we get away from there to China or any other place, for Atkins is bound to turn up there, unless, by a stroke of good luck for us, he meets with bad weather, and they all go to the bottom. That's one chance in our favour.”
“His boat is certainly very deep,” said Hendry musingly, as he nervously stroked his long beard.
“She is; but then she has a kanaka crew, and I never yet heard of a drowned kanaka, any more than I've heard of a dead donkey. With a white crew she would stand to run some heavy risks in bad weather, with kanakas she'd keep afloat anyhow.”
Hendry uttered an oath, and tugged at his beard savagely. “Go on, go on, then. Don't keep harping on the pros and cons.”
“Take another drink, man. Don't behave like a fretful child. Curse it all! To think of us being euchred so easily by Carr and Atkins! Why, they must have half a boat load of Winchester and Sniders, judging by the way they were firing.... There, drink that, Louis. Oh, if we had had but a couple of those long trade Sniders out of the trade-room!” He struck his clenched fist upon the thwart. “We could have kept our own distance from the second mate, and finished him and his crowd as easily as we did the others.”