“You propose, then, to capture the Rajah on the high seas, following it with your much more speedy yacht?”
“Oh, no, not capture. I’m going to take possession, that’s all. The Rajah is mine as incontestably as the yacht is. The ore with which she will be loaded is also mine. Everything shall be done as legally as if we were transacting our affairs in the Temple or Gray’s Inn. Doesn’t that put to shame your wild Scottish Highland ideas of fighting and slaughter? You ought to wear kilts and a dirk, Mackeller, but my instrument is a quill pen and nice red stamps embossed at Somerset House.”
“And who will pay the men who are blasting out the ore on the banks of the river Paramakaboo?”
“Why, really, Mackeller, that is no affair of mine. These industrious people are employed by the saintly Schwartzbrod. If that astute financier elects to engage a large body of labor to get out my ore for me, then I think you will admit, Mackeller, much as you are prejudiced against him, that he is really the philanthropic benefactor of his race I have always said he was.”
“But—but—but,” stammered Mackeller, “when they discover how they have been befooled, there will be a riot.”
“I don’t see that. When I discharge the captain and crew at Plymouth, I shall have cut the live wire, if I may use an expression from your absorbing profession. The connecting cable between those deluded miners in West Africa and the amiable syndicate in London, will be severed. The captain knows nothing, I take it, of Schwartzbrod. He was employed by Sparling & Bilge. Going ashore at Plymouth, out of a job, he would probably look for a ship in that port, and failing to find one, might journey to his old employers at Southampton. But, although I discharge the captain, I don’t intend to turn him adrift. I have already set influences at work which will secure for him a better boat than the Rajah, and the contented man will sail away from Plymouth, from London, or from some northern port, as the case may be. It is not likely that captain, officers, or crew know the nature of the ore they will be carrying, but I don’t intend to leave the wire partially cut. I shall provide places on various ships for officers and crew, and scatter them over the face of the earth, casting my breadwinners on the waters, as one may say, hoping they will not return for many days.”
“But when Schwartzbrod hears nothing of the Rajah at whatever foreign port he ordered her to sail, he will make inquiries of Sparling & Bilge.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“Why?”
“Because he has chartered their ship, and must either produce the steamer or renew the charter. That reminds me, for how long a period was the Rajah engaged?”