“Bol and the rest of you know the worth of what’s below. Make me an offer in writing. It’ll content me.”
“Give me a figure to go upon,” said he standing up. “Tell us what you was to get if Captain Greaves had carried the brig home.”
“Six thousand pounds, and a thousand from Captain Greaves—seven thousand pounds.”
An oath broke from him—he checked himself; struck his thigh hard, picked up his cap, and looked at me sideways. Then, stepping to the door, he exclaimed:
“Good pay compared to the forecastle allowance.”
I began to whistle, and drew on paper with the pencil I had calculated with. He again eyed me sideways and went out.
I believe it was on the fifth day of the heavy weather that Teach had paid me this visit. Next morning, while I was breakfasting with the Spanish lady, Jimmy—the boy as I call him, though he was a great, hulking, strong, sprawling lad as you know; half an idiot in many directions, but quick and even intelligent in some—this lad came into the cabin and said that Bol asked to speak to me. I would not have the Dutchman below, neither would I leave my breakfast; so I bid the lad say I’d be on deck by and by. Down he comes a minute later with a bit of dirty folded paper in his hand.
“Master,” says he, “Mister Bol didn’t know you was at breakfast. Will you read this, and tell him, when you go on deck, if it’s to your satisfaction?”
The dirty piece of paper was like to the sheets that had been used for the Round Robin. It was the fly-leaf of some old book, yellow with age and pockmarked with brine. A Dutch scrawl in faint ink half covered it. The precious document ran thus:
Meester Fielding, dis vhas a bondt. All handts agree. Suppose dere vhas fifteen ton silver—vell, two tons vhas yours if you sail der brick true und does her duty by oos ash we does by him. Dot being right ve all makes our marks and sines her names ash oonder. If you goes wrong dis bondt vhas tore-sop, und vot vhas las’ wrote stans for noting. Dere vhas no more paper.