“It might take years.”
“So it might. But how many years would it take in this beggarly calling of the sea, to amass such a fortune as lies waiting in a hole in an island to be divided betwixt Tulp and me and you and the men?”
“No years of the sea calling could compass it.”
After a pause, he exclaimed:
“Yet I am struck by one remark you have made. This brig cannot be navigated without men. It must, therefore, come to my trusting the crew, and perhaps I might find no honester fellows than those on board.”
“They are beginning to want to know, pretty earnestly too, I guess, where they are bound to.”
“That I suppose,” he answered; “but how do you know what’s in their minds?”
I repeated the conversation I had held with Yan Bol in the night. He listened attentively.
“With what sort of manner did he express himself?” he asked.
“He was respectful, sir,” I answered, for now I would often sir my friend out of habit.