Greaves had a just and considerable admiration for him, the fullest confidence in him as a sailor, and counted him the best boatswain he had ever heard of; and I agreed with him. Going, however, rather farther, for I had distrusted the man from the beginning, and my distrust of him was now deeper than ever it had been, and I would have given half my share of the money in the lazarette had we been blown away from the island when he was ashore and forced to proceed without him.
The two Spaniards were bad sailors, lazy and reckless. Bol could do nothing with them. They skulked when there was business to be done aloft, were not to be trusted at the wheel, and it came at last to our putting them to help the cook and do the dirty work of the ship when they were not at sail-making—for, to be sure, they were smart hands with their palms and needles. There were no more fights, no more assertions by Antonio and his mate Jorge of their claims to a share. In talking to me one day about them Bol said it was the wish of the crew to turn them out of the brig at the first chance.
“The captain won’t hear of it,” said I.
The Dutchman asked why.
“Because,” said I, “the Spaniards know that there is treasure on board. They also know it is Spanish treasure and how got by us. Suppose you tranship them; they arrive at a port and state what they know. The news that we have salved the treasure reaches the ears of the owner of it, who thereupon makes application for restitution. Our business is to keep clear of difficulties.”
“Yaw, dot do I see. But hark you, Mr. Fielding, ve keep der Spaniards und ve arrive home, und der Spaniards go ashore, und den? I ox, und den? Vill dey not shpeak all der same as dey vould shpoke in von of der own ports down here?”
“I have considered that; so, too, has Captain Greaves. There is a remedy, but it does not lie in transferring them in these seas.”
He shrugged his shoulders and the subject dropped.
But the long and short of Greaves’s policy in this particular matter was; get the money home in safety first, bring off the treasure clear of the fifty sea risks and perils of the age—the gale, the shoal, the leak, the pirate, the enemy’s ships of the State. It will be time enough to trouble yourself with what the Spaniards and others of the crew may whisper ashore when the money has been landed, divided, exchanged into gold of the realm, with plenty of leisure for a disappearance that might run into time should the news of the salving of the treasure of the Casada ever reach the ears of the owners of the silver.
We carried good strong winds to the southward. The days grew shorter, there was an edge in the weather let the breeze blow whence it would; the swell of the sea was long and dark. We bent strong canvas for rounding the Horn, and in other ways prepared for a conflict which in those days had a significance that has departed from that wrestle. The seamen put on warm clothes; there was never a need now for the small awning aft; the sun shone white, as though the dazzle of his disk was the reflection of his beam on snow. I say his light was white and often cold when we had yet to swim many hundreds of miles to fetch the parallel of the Horn.