“Oh, you grampus!” cried Nikel, laughing. “Don’t ye know that we is the purshooers, ’cause why? We’re purshooin’ the cap’en and crew of the Termagant at law, and means to purshoo ’em too, I guess, till they stumps up for that air whale. And they is the defendants, ’cause they’re s’posed to defend themselves to the last gasp; but it ain’t o’ no manner o’ use.”
Nikel Sling was right. Captain Dixon was pursued until he paid back the value of his ill-gotten whale, and was forcibly reminded by this episode in his career, that “honesty is the best policy” after all. Thus Captain Dunning found himself suddenly put in possession of a sum of two thousand pounds.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
The Conclusion.
The trouble, and worry, and annoyance that the sum of 2000 pounds gave to Captain Dunning is past all belief. That worthy man, knowing that Glynn Proctor had scarcely a penny in the world, not even his “kit” (as sailors name their sea-chests), which had been lost in the wreck of the Red Eric, and that the boy was about to be cast upon the world again an almost friendless wanderer—knowing all this, we say, Captain Dunning insisted that as Glynn had been the first to strike the whale, and as no one else had had anything to do with its capture, he (Glynn) was justly entitled to the money.
Glynn firmly declined to admit the justice of this view of the case; he had been paid his wages; that was all he had any right to claim; so he positively refused to take the money. But the captain was more than his match. He insisted so powerfully, and argued so logically, that Glynn at last consented, on condition that 500 pounds of it should be distributed among his shipmates. This compromise was agreed to, and thus Glynn came into possession of what appeared in his eyes a fortune of 1500 pounds.
“Now, what am I to do with it? that is the question.”
Glynn propounded this knotty question one evening, about three weeks after the trial, to his friends of the yellow cottage with the green-painted door.