"You vas gedding grazy, Glennie. I von't lisden to sooch a ignorance."
There was a general laugh at this.
"Now, wait a minute, Carl," proceeded Glennie. "I want to change your views on the subject of luck. If we had not taken the convicts aboard we should not have delivered them to Captain Sandoval; and——"
"Und oof ve hatn't telivered dem to Santoval," continued Carl, taking up the theme, "Matt vouldn't have gone on der poat und got indo drouple."
"And if Matt hadn't got into trouble, we should not have put in at Punta Arenas; and if we hadn't stopped there, we wouldn't have got Matt away from Sandoval; and if Sandoval hadn't been trying to test Matt's story about the convicts, he wouldn't have come after us when we fled from Punta Arenas; and if he hadn't found us and made his peace with Matt, he wouldn't now be chasing the Sons of the Rising Sun or——"
"Ach, himmelblitzen!" groaned Carl, clapping his fingers over his ears, "shdop it! You vill haf me grazier as a pedpug."
"Well, you see, don't you, that helping the convicts, which you called bad luck, really resulted in bringing us in touch with Captain Sandoval, who is now our friend and doing his utmost to overhaul the Japs. He will keep the Sons of the Rising Sun so busy that they won't have any chance to follow us up the coast."
"You've run the bell with your remarks, Glennie," said Dick. "We can't always tell whether things are happening to us for the better or for the worse. But, taking 'em full and by, they usually pan out what's best for us."
"My little scheme for gaining time on the Japs by sending them around the Horn didn't work," put in Matt.