"One word!" shouted Ginnell, suddenly dropping the mask of urbanity and levelling the pistol.
It was as though the tiger-cat in his grimy soul had suddenly burst bonds and mastered him. His finger pressed on the trigger and the next moment Harman's brains, or what he had of them, might have been literally forenint him on the table, when suddenly, tremendous as the last trumpet, paralysing as the inrush of a body of armed men, booing and bellowing back from the cliffs in a hundred echoes came a voice—the blast of a ship's syren.
"Huroop, Hirrip, Hurop, Haar—Haar—Haar!"
Ginnell's arm fell. Harman, forgetting everything, turned, dashed into the cabin behind him, climbed on the upper bunk, and stuck his head through the port-hole.
Then he dashed back into the saloon.
"It's the Port of Amsterdam," cried Harman, "It's the salvage ship, she's there droppin' her anchor; we're done, we're dished—and we foolin' like this and they crawlin' up on us."
"And you said she'd only do eight knots!" cried Blood.
Ginnell flung the revolver on the floor. Every trace of the recent occurrence had vanished, and the three men thought no more of one another than a man thinks of petty matters in the face of dissolution. Gunderman was outside, that was enough for them.
"Boys," said Ginnell, "ain't there no way out with them dollars? S'pose we howk them ashore?"
"Cliffs two hundred foot high," said Harman, "not a chanst. We're dished."