"They're goin' to make a landin', Gib."
"—then I deduct that this body-snatchin' Scraggs——"
"They're boardin' us, Gib."
"—has arranged with yon fat Chinaman to relieve us o' the unwelcome presence of his defunct friends. He's gone an' hunted up the relatives an' made 'em come across—that's what he's done. The dirty, low, schemin' granddaddy of all the foxes in Christendom! Wasn't I the numbskull not to think of it myself?"
"'Tain't too late to mend your ways, Gib. I don't see Scraggs nowhere," Mr. McGuffey suggested promptly. "All that remains for me an' you to do, Gib, is to imagine the price, collect the money, an' declare a dividend. Quick, Gib! What'll we ask him?"
"I'll fish around an' see what figger Scraggs charged him," the cautious Gibney replied and stepped to the rail to meet Gin Seng, for it was indeed he.
"Sow-see, sow-see, hun-gay," Mr Gibney saluted the Chinaman in a facetious attempt to talk the latter's language. "Hello, there, John Chinaman. How's your liver? Captain he allee same get tired; he no waitee. Wha's mallah, John. Too long time you no come. You heap lazy all time."
Gin Seng smiled his bland, inscrutable Chinese smile. "You ketchum two China boy in box?" he queried.
"We have," boomed McGuffey, "an' beautiful specimens they be."
"No money, no China boy," Gibney added firmly.