“Well, well!” exclaimed Adoniram. “It’s too bad her hull can’t be secured for the boy. If it’s still sound——”
“Sound as a dollar!”
“Where is it floating?”
“’Cordin’ to the report of a cap’n wot sighted her, she’s somewheres about latitude 22, longitude 70.”
“A pretty valuable derelict, eh, Caleb?” said the merchant, reflectively.
“Valible? Well, I should say!” The old sailor looked at his friend curiously a moment, and then leaned forward and rested his huge hand on Adoniram’s knee. “Besides a valible cargo wot we took on at the Cape and Rio, there’s enough diamonds hid aboard that brig to make the boy a second Vanderbilt!”
“Mercy me!” exclaimed the merchant, and this time the eye glasses leaped off their insecure resting place and fell with a crash to the floor, the splintered crystal flying in all directions.
“Now you’ve done it, Adoniram!” ejaculated Caleb in disgust. “What under the canopy a man like you—with no nose to speak of—wants to try to wear such tackle as them for, is beyond me.”
“Well—er—Frances thinks they look better on me than other kinds of glasses,” remarked the merchant meekly.
“Well—hem!—I s’pose they do look some better on ye,” declared Caleb loyally, and then a slight noise from the other side of the door caused him to jump up and spring hastily to it.