"I think we had better count the money," I suggested, as I took the package we had found under the companion-way from my breast-pocket.
"Yes, count, and see if the rascals made a fair 'divvy' of it," added the captain.
Colonel Shepard began to count the bills he had taken from the money-belt, and I opened the package in my possession. As I did so, I found the words, "First National Bank of Florida," as if impressed by a stamp, on the wrapper. The two tin plates, by which I had been able to recognize the package, were made by cutting off the round ends of a pair of tins used for doubling papers and tearing off checks or other papers. I concluded they were a device of the bank messenger, by which he could square his package. When I had shown these things to the captain, I proceeded to count the money.
"Just two thousand dollars," said the colonel, who finished his work long before I did mine.
"Nineteen hundred and ninety," I added, when I had finished the count.
"He may have taken out ten dollars," suggested the colonel.
"I don't believe Cornwood did, for I found other money in his pockets, which I did not touch," added Captain Blastblow.
"Count it over again, Captain Alick," said the colonel.
I did so, laying off the bills in hundreds, as they amounted to this sum. My last lot came out right, and I had twenty piles. It made just two thousand dollars. It was clear now, if it had not been before, that Cornwood's visit to Key West related to Nick Boomsby, and not to the detention of the Islander when she arrived there. The equal division of the money explained the long and rather stormy conversations between the passengers of the Islander. Cornwood was smart, if he was nothing else in the way of honesty and uprightness. He had bullied and persuaded poor Nick Boomsby to give him half the money, and would probably have stolen the other half before the vessel got to New Orleans, if we had not captured her on the way.
I was sorry for Nick Boomsby, for he had been the playmate of my early years; not so sorry that he had been found out as that he could commit a crime. But I could hardly wonder at his guilt when I thought of what his father had done, and what an example he had given his son. I thought the father was almost, if not quite, as much to blame as the son.