The ink with which this Round Robin was manufactured was pale, and might have been compounded of lampblack mixed with water. The handwriting was extraordinary—a Dutch scrawl, scarcely decipherable here and there. When I had read it through, and twisted the thing round so as to peruse the names, I burst into a laugh.
“It is Yan Bol’s dictation,” said Greaves, “and Wirtz took it down. Probably a whole book of ‘Paradise Lost’ gave Milton less trouble than this composition of the poor devils forward.”
“What shall you do, sir?” said I, putting the paper down on the table.
“Oh, the petition forces my hand. It is the whole ship’s company, you see, barring Jimmy, who delivered it. I will ask you to step on deck and tell Bol that I’ll communicate the business of the voyage to the men this afternoon at eight bells.” I was about to leave the berth. “I’ll frankly own, Fielding,” he exclaimed, “that I am influenced by you in this matter. If you were in my place you would no longer withhold the secret of this errand from the crew?”
“I would not. My argument is that this brig must, under any circumstances, be navigated by a ship’s company. A time must come when you will be obliged to trust your crew, and the present crew seem to me as likely and trustworthy a lot as a man must hope to meet with in the republic of the merchantman’s forecastle.”
“I lack decision,” he exclaimed, “and why? The stake is a huge one. Well, give Yan Bol my message, will you?”
I left him, fetched my cap, and went thoughtfully on deck. I had reckoned him, when we first met, a man of strong and energetic character—a person in the first degree qualified for the control of a ship bound on such a mission as this of gathering dollars from a hole in a rock. His indecision now was a disappointment, and it puzzled me. It did not please me that my views should influence him. I wished that he should stand bolt upright under his own burden. That my views would not have influenced him in any other direction than this, which concerned the trustworthiness of the men, I fully believed, and my opinion weighing with him in this matter increased my suspicion of the credibility of his story of the ship imprisoned in the cave; for I felt that, if he had no doubts at all that his ship with her cargo of dollars was as matter of fact a reality as the Black Watch herself, his method of approaching her would be based on iron-hard resolutions; whereas, if he had dreamt of the ship—if his hope and faith were those of a dream only—then might there, then would there, be an element of uncertainty in his views; and such an element of uncertainty I seemed to find in his first resolution not to impart the secret of the voyage to the men until the brig was south of the equator, and in his sudden determination now to communicate that secret at four o’clock this afternoon.
I gained the deck. Yan Bol stumped the planks. He was clad in heavy clothes, and his figure looked more than half its usual size. In fact, the further we drew south the more clothes did Yan Bol heap upon his back. His notion was that what was good to keep out the cold was good to keep out the heat. It was a Dutchman’s notion of apparel, like to the Frenchman’s idea of washing: “Why should I wash myself? I shall be dirty again.”
Yan Bol came to a stand when I rose through the hatch. He wore a fur cap with flaps, which the wind shook about his ears. I did not choose to be in a hurry, though he seemed to guess my mission, and eyed me out of the flat expanse of his face with a civil, or at least unconscious, frown of expectation. I looked up at the canvas; I gazed round upon the sea; I walked very deliberately to the binnacle, and stood for some moments with my eyes upon the compass-card, observing the behavior of the brig as she was swung along her course by the quartering seas. I then leisurely approached Bol.