“Nothing,” Wardour answered. “Go or stay, it’s all one to me.”
“I hope you don’t really mean that?” said Crayford.
“I do.”
“I am sorry to hear it, Wardour.”
Captain Helding answered the general suggestion in favor of volunteering by a question which instantly checked the rising enthusiasm of the meeting.
“Well,” he said, “suppose we say volunteers. Who volunteers to stop in the huts?”
There was a dead silence. The officers and men looked at each other confusedly. The captain continued:
“You see we can’t settle it by volunteering. You all want to go. Every man among us who has the use of his limbs naturally wants to go. But what is to become of those who have not got the use of their limbs? Some of us must stay here, and take care of the sick.”
Everybody admitted that this was true.
“So we get back again,” said the captain, “to the old question—Who among the able-bodied is to go? and who is to stay? Captain Ebsworth says, and I say, let chance decide it. Here are dice. The numbers run as high as twelve—double sixes. All who throw under six, stay; all who throw over six, go. Officers of the Wanderer and the Sea-mew, do you agree to that way of meeting the difficulty?”