“Good!” he exclaimed.
“It is so much right,” said I, “that I am disposed to think there is more money than the manifest represents.”
“There are five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in one hundred and forty cases. I wish there may be more, but I suspect the entry was correct. What did the men say?”
“Yan Bol was all a-rumble with questions. There will be much talk forward.”
“There has been much talk aft,” he exclaimed, smiling. “Sailors are human, and those fellows yonder are to pocket twelve hundred dollars apiece besides their wages on this job. Let them talk. Let imagination run away with them. Let the fiddle be jigging in their ears; let their Polls be seated on their knees—in fancy. Keep their hearts willing, for this bucket has to be whipped home.”
The lady Aurora looked and listened as she paced abreast of us. Her eyes, full of light, often rested on me. Greaves ran his gaze slightly over her figure, and, leaning back in his chair and looking away, that she might not suspect he talked of her, said:
“Our dark and lonely friend is mighty full of curiosity. I can believe that Eve was such another. When Eve walked round the apple tree and looked up at the fruit, with her head a little on one side, she wore just the sort of expression the dark and lonely party puts on when she motions a question.”
“Qué hora es, señor?” said the lady.
Greaves made her understand, by pronouncing the word “one” in Spanish and by gesticulating the remainder of his meaning, that it was drawing on to two o’clock.
“She may be hungry,” said I.