“What’s that?—Shut up, De Saumarez, I’m doing a little thinking. So you think they mean to spoil the stone, eh, Charlesworth?”
“I guess they mean to,” said the American, austerely, “but I guess I don’t mean them to.”
“Well, yes, I guess the same; but how do you think they’d set about it?”
“Tamper with the cartridges. Overcharge them, I’d bet: smash the whole place up, so’s you couldn’t cut a lady’s paper-weight out of the bits. And if we went up along with it I guess they wouldn’t go into mourning. That’s the kind of crowd they are: measly little city-bred slushes who’ll do anything so long as they can keep their own skins whole.”
“I don’t want to lose my granite, and still less to lose my life,” said Farquhar. “How do you propose to circumvent them?”
“Well, there’s three of us, sir; I reckon we should be able to keep things straight. I dare say you know the difference between a one-pound charge and a two-pound, and I know I do, and so does Mr. de Saumarez here. What we shall have to do is to watch. There’s a matter of a couple more blasts to run, besides the last. It’ll mean testing every charge every time; but that’s how I made out we’d do it. Or, of course, if you like it better, we could cave in, and give the little beggar his solatium, and raise the men; that’d quiet them for a bit, and then I dare say they’d let us get this job through and we could fight it out after, when we don’t stand to lose so much. I’m not boss here; it’s for you to choose, sir.”
“What do you say, De Saumarez?”
“What the dickens is the use of me saying anything, when you’ve already made up your mind like unto the solid earth that cannot be moved?”
“Well, I think we’ll fight it out, then,” said Farquhar, with a laugh.
“Fight goes,” concluded Charlesworth.