“When I was in a Company’s ship I think I heerd something of the sort, but there’s no law where Amsterdam Island is, and if there was—we aren’t pirates, anyhow;” and he made as if he would rise.
“It’s a damnably wicked scheme, a hanging scheme, and as stupid as it’s wicked. D’ye know what Yan Bol told me to-day?... Friend, I’m an Englishman talking to an Englishman; and this threat is an accursed Dutchman’s. Yan Bol told me to-day that if I refused to navigate the brig to Amsterdam Island, you men would send me adrift in one of the boats, along with the two Spaniards.”
“Mr. Fielding,” he exclaimed earnestly, “it was talked of—it is talked of. You’ll be making it mere talk, sir. I’m for working this traverse on the smooth. Let good will grease the ways, says I. Why, aint it for you as well as for us? You’re no servant of Tulp’s, and the captain is gone dead, and if we says, ‘Here stow more’n the allowance of dollars ye was to have, only steer us true and take a sheepshank in your tongue,’ who wouldn’t be you? It’s easy terms for a swilling measure. And that’s my sentiments straight.”
“You can go forward, Friend,” said I, “and tell Mr. Yan Bol and the men that I have thought the matter over, that I consent to remain captain of the brig, and to navigate her to Amsterdam Island.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
BOL’S RUSE.
“What demons!” exclaimed the lady Aurora when Friend had left the cabin. “You do well to consent. May the Holy Virgin watch over us and deliver us!” She cast up her eyes and crossed herself with great devotion.
When Friend was gone with my message I leaned upon the cabin table thinking. The Spanish lady chattered. I did not heed her. I had no hope, saw no prospect, could imagine no issue. True, much might happen; but then, what would be good for my safety—for my own and the safety of Madam Aurora—might prove fatal to my fortune, and my dollars were with me the first of all considerations.
I wanted my six thousand pounds: I wanted the thirty thousand pounds which formed Greaves’ share, that I might deal with it in accordance with his instructions. I wished to realize the happy dreams I had been dreaming throughout the voyage. It was maddening to think of the whole fifteen tons of silver falling into the hands of the blackguard fellows forward; and yet the devil’s luck of the business, as it now stood, was this, that what was bad for them was bad for me—by which I mean that if the brig was captured by an enemy, or boarded by an Englishman and the money discovered; if she foundered or was stranded with the dollars aboard, I might indeed escape with my life, I might be delivered along with the lady Aurora from the situation I was now in—but my dollars would be lost to me, and with them my sweet and jolly prospects.
I went into my cabin, brought out a chart, and putting it under the lamp laid off a course for the Cape of Good Hope. I likened my feelings to those of a man who is wakened by a jailer and told that all is ready, that he can order what he likes for breakfast, and that the chaplain will wait upon him presently. I struck the chart a blow with my fist, and hissed a curse at it like any stage ruffian. We were to be bound the other way now. We were sailing to the inhospitable ends of the earth; the stars of the south were to arise again; the star of the pole must remain a dream of home.
The tragic suddenness of it all, when only at dinner that day I was rejoicing in spirit over our progress north, and telling my Spanish companion what I meant to do with my share of the dollars!