He came up, wiping his paws with his oily rag. His manner was sententious.
“I thought, sir, that you might have something which you wished to say to me.”
“About what?”
“This little game.”
“What little game?”
“The one we’ve just been playing. You see we’ve all been taking a hand in it, and there’s a kind of feeling aboard this ship that there might be something a little delicate about it, which might bring us into trouble before we’ve done. And no man likes to take a risk—for nothing.”
“I see. That’s it. You know me, and you know that I’m as good as my word. You may tell the men from me that if the venture is brought safely into port, and turns out what I expect, it will be twenty-five pounds in the pockets of every man on board this ship, and a hundred for each officer.”
“And what for the first engineer?” With that confounded oil rag of his he wiped his scrubby chin. “I’m thinking that, under the circumstances, I shouldn’t like to guarantee that the engines ’ll last out for a hundred pounds. They’re just a lot of bits of iron tied together with scraps of string. To keep them going will mean sleepless nights.”
I laughed.
“Are they so bad as that? I’m sorry to hear it, Mr. Rudd. Rudd, you’re a blackguard. You want to rob your captain—and the owners.”