A profound silence fell over the diners. They hunched forward, staring fixedly out of sunburned, gross, dissipated faces. Longshores-men, the scum of London, who had worked all their lives for half a pound a week, gaped at the idea of two hundred thousand dollars.
Somebody repeated the sum hoarsely. Suddenly they raised an uproar.
"We'll take 'er, sir!" "We'll tow th' dock, sor!" "We weel tow zee dock to zee moon for zat!" "Sphend our loives and die rich min!"
The strong imagination of wealth ran around the table like wine. Deschaillon responded first.
"Voila! One meellion francs! I weel buy a pond near Paris and raise bull frogs. I weel buy a decoration and be a knight. I weel——"
"I'll start an undertaker shop!" glowed Galton, "and my old mother shall have a bit of ground to raise flowers."
"Glory be!" chanted Hogan, "Oi'll wear a tall hat, a long-tailed coat and carry a silver-headed cane, and thin Susie Maloney and Bridget O'Malley and Peggy O'Brien will be sorry they iver tossed up their saucy noses at th' love o' an honest lad!"
"I'll own a kennel of bulldogs," growled Mulcher, "and 'ave a fight hev'ry day."
All this was given in chorus and much of it lost. Those who didn't speak aloud their heart's desires thought them. Fortune had shown her golden form to these crude men for a fleeting instant, and dreams, long hidden in their hearts, suddenly leaped to life. They were poor dreams, selfish dreams, foolish dreams, but for the moment they poised, like liberated fairies, for a flight to the land where dreams come true.
"We sail in the morning," explained Madden, "for a South American port. Is there anyone in this crew who knows anything about running a marine engine?"