“And so we have,” said he.
“What about the men?” I asked. “They know too much by half, and you can’t keep them from talking.”
“Can’t I?” returned Nares. “I bet a boarding-master can! They can be all half-seas-over when they get ashore, blind drunk by dark, and cruising out of the Golden Gate in different deep-sea ships by the next morning. Can’t keep them from talking, can’t I? Well, I can make ’em talk separate, leastways. If a whole crew came talking, parties would listen; but if it’s only one lone old shell-back, it’s the usual yarn. And at least, they needn’t talk before six months, or—if we have luck, and there’s a whaler handy—three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it’s ancient history.”
“That’s what they call Shanghaiing, isn’t it?” I asked. “I thought it belonged to the dime novel.”
“O, dime novels are right enough,” returned the captain. “Nothing wrong with the dime novel, only that things happen thicker than they do in life, and the practical seamanship is off colour.”
“So we can keep the business to ourselves,” I mused.
“There’s one other person that might blab,” said the captain. “Though I don’t believe she has anything left to tell.”
“And who is she?” I asked.
“The old girl there,” he answered, pointing to the wreck; “I know there’s nothing in her; but somehow I’m afraid of some one else—it’s the last thing you’d expect, so it’s just the first that’ll happen—some one dropping into this God-forgotten island where nobody drops in, waltzing into that wreck that we’ve grown old with searching, stooping straight down, and picking right up the very thing that tells the story. What’s that to me? you may ask, and why am I gone Soft Tommy on this Museum of Crooks? They’ve smashed up you and Mr. Pinkerton; they’ve turned my hair grey with conundrums they’ve been up to larks, no doubt; and that’s all I know of them—you say. Well, and that’s just where it is. I don’t know enough; I don’t know what’s uppermost it’s just such a lot of miscellaneous eventualities as I don’t care to go stirring up; and I ask you to let me deal with the old girl after a patent of my own.”
“Certainly—what you please,” said I, scarce with attention, for a new thought now occupied my brain. “Captain,” I broke out, “you are wrong: we cannot hush this up. There is one thing you have forgotten.”