"It'll require a jolly sight more than thinking," remarked Trevorrick grimly.
"It's risky."
"Course it is. So's everything, if you go the wrong way about it. Take shipbreaking: you might get cut in two by a chunk of steel plate, or you might try the business end of an oxygen-acetylene flame. That's happened before to-day."
"You—I mean, we—would probably be caught inside of a week," said Pengelly, resuming his habit of raising objections. "Aircraft and wireless don't give a fellow much of a chance."
"Not if we played our cards properly."
"Don't see how," rejoined the little man petulantly. "And when we're collared——"
He completed the sentence by a double gesture—a circular motion of his right hand in a horizontal plane followed by a rapid vertical movement.
"Better that than seven years," said Trevorrick coolly. "But you're showing the white feather already."
"Surely you're joking about it?"
"Never more serious in all my life," the senior partner hastened to assure him. "The audacity of the thing is in our favour. Ask any naval expert. He'll tell you that piracy, except in the Red Sea and the China Station, is as dead as Queen Anne. I'm going to show the blamed experts that they're talking through their hats."