“You mean to cast her away?”
“Why, what are we to do with her?” said he, talking all this while with his little eyes rooted on my face. “Carry her to Port Jackson? What’s the yarn we’re to spin? Where are we to ha’ come from? Where was we to be bound to? We’ve thought it o’er. We don’t like the notion. She’s a pretty boat, but she must go. There’s a blooming lot of us. Are we all to be trusted? Are we all going to stick to the same yarn if it comes to close questioning? Any durned fool can be a shipwrecked sailor. There’s a-many durned fools piking it now as castaways on the British roads, a-yarning spunkily, and saving money.”
I thought to myself, “And you’d trust me, would you? You’d allow me to be one of your shipwrecked party, eh? And if I am not to be one of your shipwrecked party—and most surely you don’t intend that I shall be—what’s to happen betwixt this and New Holland? How have you hearts of oak arranged to get rid of me?”
I looked down and sat silent in thought. He stirred, as if to leave, and said:
“We’re too many, sir.”
“For the dollars?”
He grinned, and answered:
“No. There are dollars enough for all hands. We’re too many mouths for the stock of provisions and water.”
“Yan Bol has threatened to send me adrift, curse him! Do you mean that I should go first to shrink your company!”
“No, no!” he answered, in a voice heavy and almost savage with emphasis; and he thumped his knee with his fist. “We can’t do without you—you know that, Mr. Fielding. And that brings me to something I’ll tell you in a minute or two. It’s them Spaniards. What’s the good of them?”