“Over with ye, Bol. Catch hold of this lantern.”
He dropped through the hatch and I followed, and Miss Aurora stood at the edge of the square of the hole, holding by the companion steps and peering down.
There were one hundred and forty cases; we examined every one of them; it was a long job. I felt mighty reluctant at first to let Bol prize open the lids and gaze with the others at the dull, frosty glitter of the long rolls of dollars; but a little reflection made me sensible of the force of Greaves’ argument. If the crew were not to be trusted, what was to be done? And was it not a mere piece of cheap quarter-deck subtlety on my part to hold that the idea of the dollars being aft was not the same as seeing them?
There was no need to watch very anxiously; the dollars were packed as tightly as though the metal had been poured red-hot into the cases and hardened in solid blocks. There was never a nail on Bol’s stump-ended fingers that could have scratched a coin out.
“Vhas dere goldt here as veil ash silver?” he inquired.
“No.”
“Oxcuse me, Mr. Fielding, but how vhas you to know?”
“How was anybody to know what these cases contained at all? Shove ahead, will ye, and ask fewer questions. Are we to be here all day?”
It was as hot as fire in this lazarette. Our blood was speedily in a blaze and our clothes soaked. The three Jews who were summoned from the province of Babylon to be hove into a burning furnace suffered not as we did. Bol’s eyes took a gummy look and turned dull as bits of jelly fish; yet the three fellows were perfectly happy in staring at the silver and pulling the cases about. Every time a lid was lifted their heads came together in the sheen of the lantern, and rude sounds of rejoicing broke from them.
“How many sprees goes to each box?”