“A good hit! You’re not so slow yourself,” cried the other, not in the least offended.
“The steamer is steering into southern waters,” resumed O’Shea, “and ’tis likely that it was arranged beforehand for another vessel to meet her and take the treasure and the men aboard. What will they do with the Alsatian? I misdoubt they will sink her with all hands of us, though Vonderholtz would lose no sleep over it, but he will want the world to know about his great blow against the capitalists and the parasites and the likes of us. It is a joke to class Johnny Kent and me as enemies of the poor, could ye look into our pockets.”
“It certainly makes me swell up and feel rich to be lumped with the plutocrats,” cheerfully observed Johnny Kent.
Jenkins P. Chase let his small bright eyes rove for a moment, and his wise, wizened features were sardonically amused as he said:
“We’re in a floating lunatic asylum, where my money is no good. God knows what the crack-brained anarchist in command will do with the ship. He has handed out a jolt to capital, all right. Of course, if you two men can concoct any scheme to win, you’re welcome to fill in a blank check for any sum you like and I’ll see that it is cashed the day we land in New York.”
Captain O’Shea clapped a strong hand on the rich man’s bony little shoulder and exclaimed, as though admonishing a foolish child:
“Tut, tut! ’Tis nonsense ye talk. We are all in the same boat, and there are women and children amongst us. You must put it out of your head that your life has any special gilt-edged value out here at sea. We sink or swim together. And I am not anxious to chop off me own existence to please this madman of a Professor Ernst Wilhelm Vonderholtz.”
“He said something about chucking me overboard,” sighed Jenkins P. Chase.
“And he looked as if he meant it,” amiably observed Johnny Kent.
With this, the twain bade the millionaire take heart and left him to his unhappy meditations. An idea had come to Johnny Kent and he wished to thrash it over with his comrade in the seclusion of their own room. For a long time they argued it, testing every detail, O’Shea dissuading, but convinced against his will that the thing should be attempted. It was a desperate hazard, a forlorn hope, and gray-haired, honest old Johnny Kent must stake his life. Success meant the recapture of the ship, and the engineer was obstinately determined to undertake it.