“Don’t know,” answered the captain.
“Of course not—no matter. We shall find out. She sails to-morrow at all events, and I go with her. You will go back with Mr Cupples to Grizzly Bear Gulch, work the gold, make what you can out of it, pay yourselves, and hold the estate for me. I’ll get that legally arranged to-night. You’ll tell my comrades how sorry I am to leave them so abruptly, but under the circumstances they will—”
“Softly,” interrupted Captain Dall; “if all this is to be settled to-night, we had better set about it at once, and not waste time with words.”
“Right, captain. Let us off to search for the captain of the ship.”
Leaving Mr Cupples to eat the supper alone, our hero and his friend went out in hot haste, and soon found themselves in the presence of the captain of the Roving Bess, which was to sail next day.
“By the way,” whispered Will to his friend, as they were entering the room in which the skipper sat, “do you happen to have any cash? for I have only twenty pounds.”
“Not a rap,” whispered the captain.
“You are the captain of the Roving Bess, I am told?” said Will, addressing a big rawboned man, who sat at a table solacing himself with a glass of spirits and water and a cigar.
“Ya–a–s, Cap’n Bra–a–o–wn, at y’r sarvice.”
Captain Brown drawled this out so slowly that one might have supposed he did it on principle, as a sort of general protest against the high-pressure speed and hurry that influenced every one around him.