"Just as bad as to send it direct to Uncle Randolph. Once let them know at home where we are, and we are done for fast enough."
"Well," Taberman said, after a brief pause in which he had apparently been summing up the situation in his mind, "the harm's done by this time, anyway; and I don't see that there's anything for us but to stick to our guns, blow high, blow low. We'll mail 'em when we get ready to go back."
Castleport regarded the letters in his hand gravely.
"I suppose there's nothing else to do," he said slowly. "The Merle is of course registered at Lloyd's, and he'd only have to cable over to have us nabbed anywhere along the whole coast."
"He may see the arrival in the shipping-lists as it is, I should think," Jerry observed rather gloomily.
"Of course; but we've got to run our chances on that. He's not very much in the habit of studying the sailing-lists as far as I know, but he may do it now. Anyway we've got to run for luck."
"The luck has been pretty good so far," was Jerry's consoling observation; "and I won't begin to distrust it now."
The result of the conversation was that the letters were put carefully away, and the two adventurers resolved not to worry about them. Castleport admitted that the matter troubled him not a little, but he was under the circumstances disposed to accept his comrade's very sensible observation that after all the letters might be of no especial importance.
"You see," Jerry said, with a laugh, as he gulped down the last of his tea, which had had time to become thoroughly cold, "we are really pirates, and here you go bringing the conscience of a gentleman into the business. None of that."