“I’ll sail you home and, if you choose, will give you my bond to pay you so many of the dollars as we’ll agree to. But I’ll not take you to Amsterdam Island. So what will you do?”
“What’ll you do, sir?” exclaimed Teach.
“My duty.”
“Dot vhas not even half-way,” said Bol.
I called to Jimmy to restow the charts and bring them below, and descended the companion ladder. I was alone, and glad to be alone. The looks and questions, nay, the presence of her ladyship would have been intolerable to me just then. I sat down at the table and thought, then jumped up and paced the cabin like a madman. It had come about as I had many a time feared, but more darkly than ever my imagination had foreboded. The road to Amsterdam Island ran through a hundred and fifty degrees of longitude. Suppose—an incredible suppose!—an average of a hundred and fifty miles a day; two months then in making the island! and afterward? The silver was to be landed and buried, and we should head on for Port Jackson in New Holland, where my throat would be cut if the spirit of murder left the crew a hand to cut my throat withal.
And the money being buried, good-night to my six—my seven thousand pounds—to my fine prospects, my giving up the sea forever, and settling down ashore with a wife. Tulp? God bless you, no. It was not of Tulp I thought. What was he to me? I was no servant of his, under no obligation of fidelity to him. It was the six thousand pounds which ran in my head and set my brains boiling—the six thousand and the one bequeathed to me by Greaves.
I paced the cabin like mad. What am I to do? How was I to preserve my share of the dollars? There were eleven, and with me twelve, of us now to the brig’s company; the men were not likely to count Jimmy and the two Spaniards as partners. Teach—was it Teach?—talked of an equal division; that would work out fifty thousand dollars a man; twenty thousand ahead of my present share. They’d promise me more, I daresay—offer me what I chose to take—Yes, and knife me, or drop me overboard in the hour of the coast of New Holland heaving into sight.
Nor was that all of it either: I conceived the fifteen tons of silver buried in the island of New Amsterdam: we arrive at Port Jackson: Teach’s friend—think now of the respectability of a friend of Teach!—finds a little schooner. Would the fellows return to the island with me? or would they pick up some cheap ruffian of a navigator, leaving me to wait for them?
If the money was buried my share was gone for good, my life not worth a hair of my beard. What was to be done?
While I paced the cabin I had observed that the men continued to hang about the skylight. I supposed that they were looking at the chart. By this time the skylight lay clear: Jimmy came below with the bag of charts and the pair of compasses; I heard the voices of men singing out in pull-and-hauling choruses, and the brig heeled over a little.