I had dropped his hand, but took hold of it again.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
He pulled a packet from under his pillow, wrapped round in Korean oiled cloth. "That's my will, Glover. I want to sign it. You'll find a pen and ink on that table over there. Get it."
I brought pen and ink and unwrapped the package. I found a few legal-looking papers, and a sheet of the Laird's mess note-paper dropped out, with "H.I.M.S. Laird" printed on it. As I picked up this I saw written on it, "My Last Will and Testament".
"We shall want another witness," he said, "to do those lawyers out of a haul;" and he beat on the wall with a split bamboo.
His butler or head boy came hurriedly in with a scared face. Hopkins could not sit up in bed, so I held the paper against a book whilst he signed his name, "Reginald S. Hopkins, late U.S.N.", and then I added my own name and the head boy his, first in Chinese characters and then in a rough school-boy hand in English, "Hi Ling".
"Promise me, Glover, to hand that to the Admiral."
"To the Admiral?" I said. "To Milly's father?"
"Yes, youngster; I've left her all I possess, and it's a tidy big lump," he added.
"But!" I gasped. Milly could not take his money—a pirate's money, I thought.