“That will do for me.”

“It is yours,” I answered.

“Friend,” said he, after a short pause, due to reflection, by no means to embarrassment, “I should be glad to know that I am receiving dollars. Suppose we lift the lid.”

I fetched a hammer and other tools, and nails, and when the chest was opened he brought the lantern close to the money, and after staring and running his hand over the milled edges, he said:

“These be good dollars.”

I then hammered down the lid and we went up into the cabin, where we found breakfast ready.

I much enjoyed this strange man’s conversation. He was cold and grave, very slow, and a trifle nasal of speech, and his trick of “theeing” and “thouing,” and the meeting-house turn of his phrases in general seemed to ill fit the character of a hearty English sailor. Yet he had plenty to talk about, had followed the sea for many years, had been long in the whaling business, was a considerable man at Whitby, and even had news to give me, for I was at sea in the Royal Brunswicker when he sailed on this cruise. A British sea Quaker was something of a rarity in my time; I presume he is extinct in these days. Many American whalers were commanded by Quakers, but the broad-brims of our island loved less the pursuit of the game than the safer business of tallying the blubber cargo over the side into their warehouses.

While we breakfasted I gave him a description of the proposed burial-place as it had been sketched to me by Yan Bol. He composedly entered the particulars in a pocket-book. I asked him to write down my uncle’s address at Sandwich, that he might let me know whether he fell in with or took off Yan Bol and the others and recovered the silver. He gravely promised to write to me.

We then went to business; and Captain Jonas Horsley’s first step was to accompany some men into the lazarette and superintend the transhipment of his chest of dollars. This done, he asked me how many men I wanted. I answered that I had spoken of three, but that I would be glad of as many as he could spare. He answered that he would let me have five in exchange for my prisoners. One of them was a Kanaka, or South Sea Islander, who had long sailed in whalers, and was a very good cook. The others, he said, would volunteer; but I might make my mind easy. All his men were livelies of the first water. What pay would I give?

“I will give,” said I, “whatever will bring them to me.”