"Well?" ejaculated Wrenmarsh, apparently keeping his gaze fixed in the closest interest on the red sails of a big felucca that was standing in toward the Mole.
"Well, I think I might be right in making a sort of conditional—a purely conditional"—he repeated the word for caution, wondering if he ought to make it any stronger—"arrangement. It wouldn't be valid without the sanction of the captain. You see that, of course."
"Well?" repeated the other.
"Do you see—merely conditional?" insisted Taberman.
"Yes, I suppose so," assented the other grudgingly.
"I might make a sort of conditional arrangement, then, to go to Plymouth, or perhaps to any other English port not too much out of the way, for a consideration of"—He paused again.
"Ten pounds," suggested the archæologist.
"Two hundred," said Jerry coolly.
He could have hugged himself with joy at the sound of his own voice naming the sum in such a matter-of-fact fashion. He knew well enough that but for the enormous handicap which circumstances had put upon the archæologist he would have had no chance whatever to outmanœuvre him, but this he did not bother to reflect on at the moment and might have had scruples about if he had. He gave himself up to the delight of feeling that he had distinctly the better of the man who had so carried him off his feet at Pæstum, and who had involved him in an affair of the seriousness of which Jerry had had good reason to meditate in the times in the night when his arm kept him awake. It was certainly something to have the upper hand now; and two hundred pounds, which he had named almost at random, multiplied itself in his head into a most satisfactory number of dollars.