"Of course, Martin, we feel rather diffident before you," spoke up Little Billy. "We know it is an outrage, this causing you to lose your comfortable berth ashore, and——"
"Say no more about it," interrupted Martin. "You had sufficient provocation for all your actions. And really, believe me, I am very glad I fell in with you. I am glad to be here. I have wanted to go to sea all my life. We are going to Fire Mountain now, aren't we?"
"That's the spirit!" cried the captain heartily. "And you will not lose by your joining us, lad. Even if this venture prove a failure, there is still a mighty good living to be picked up on the Pacific."
"We are a sort of coöperative association," explained Ruth. "We work on shares; something like the whaleman's lay, though more generous. Of course, we pay straight wages to the hands forward. But we of the afterguard work this way: After all expenses of a voyage have been paid, the captain as master and owner takes fifty per cent. of the net profits. The remaining fifty per cent. is divided among the rest of us, not according to rank but pro rata. We want you to join the partnership. You are to share equally with Billy, the bosun, and myself. And if we really find this stuff on Fire Mountain, your share will come to a neat fortune. No, don't start protesting—of course you are entitled to it."
"And don't commence counting your chickens before they are hatched," admonished Little Billy. "It is quite on the cards that we will reach Fire Mountain to discover Carew ahead of us. Or somebody else may have happened upon the stuff during the twenty-five years since Winters died. The last is not probable, but the first is, at least, possible. It will not do for us to rest in false security. Carew and his backers are sure to have a try for that million on Fire Mountain."
"But he does not know the island's position. I am sure of that!" objected Ruth.
"But he does know Bering Sea, almost as well as I," spoke up Captain Dabney. "And he knows the particular corner of Bering we are bound for. No—Billy is right. We must not imagine the Dawn isn't on our heels, even now. In any event, he would be setting out for the Kuriles to pick up the seal-herds, about this time; and, knowing Carew as we do, we may prophesy that he will try to find our island. Indeed, the man may have already run across Fire Mountain during his excursions in those waters—he may know its position as well as we do. He'll try to poach on our preserve, no fear.
"That ambergris would represent the profits of a score of seal-raids—and besides, there is you, Ruth, drawing him like a lodestone. His attempt to shanghai you, back there in Frisco, shows the temper of the man. If we meet the Dawn up north, and I have a hunch we shall meet her, we want to keep our eyes open. Meanwhile, we want to make a smart passage, and get there first, and away. We want to carry on—by the Lord, crack on to the limit!"
"If it has come to a race, Carew's schooner has the heels of us," observed Little Billy.
"Yes, the Dawn is the better sailer," reluctantly admitted the captain. "If the Cohasset were ten years younger, I wouldn't admit it, but the old girl isn't quite as limber as she used to be. But the log line isn't everything in an ocean race. I know Bob Carew is a good seaman, but I'll show him a trick or two this passage, for all that I'm a blind man!"