"Bless me," he cried gayly. "I might have thought! Plutus—Mammon—filthy lucre! But how extraordinary in an American—not to ask for it, you know! What'll you take for it?"
"For what?" responded Tab, not catching his drift.
He had a dreadful feeling that by becoming incomprehensible, the other might be getting the better of him.
"What's to pay for a passage of myself and my boxes to—let us say Plymouth?"
Indignation for the instant flared up in Jerry.
"This is not a passenger ship," he responded brusquely.
"Oh, of course not, my dear fellow; but as every man has his price, I suppose a yacht has too."
Common-sense and indignation worked together now to keep Taberman from an angry retort. It flashed upon him that here was a chance, one in a thousand, to pay off the hands of the Merle without troubling the President; it was a chance, too, to score off this cheeky archæologist. Taberman had already noted that Wrenmarsh was a penurious soul who hated to part with money, and he felt something of the godly joy of the departing Israelites when Moses announced the project for the spoiling of the Egyptians. England was not such an impossible distance off. They might take the Great Circle track home. Surely if Jack—
"Don't you see my position, Mr. Wrenmarsh?" he asked. "I haven't the power to dispose of the Merle. I'm simply in charge of her while the captain's ashore, don't you see? Still"—
He paused dramatically.