“I have stripped her of the main topgallant sail,” said he; “Yan Bol has the watch. I will tell you what I like about Yan Bol—he has the throat of a cannon; he does not shout, he explodes. He sends an order like a twenty-four-pound ball slinging aloft. The wind of his cry might beat down a sheep.”
“Van Laar enjoys his food,” said I.
“Van Laar is a gorging baboon,” he exclaimed; “but he shall not long be a gorging baboon in my cabin or even on board my ship.”
He resumed his seat in his bed, and, pulling from his pocket the little book from which he had read the particulars of the cargo in the main hold of La Perfecta Casada, he fastened his eyes upon a page of it, mused a while, and proceeded thus:
“We left the Spanish ship, pulled clear of the reef, and got aboard the Hero. I called my mate to me, told him that the island was uncharted, and that it behoved us to clearly ascertain its situation in order to correctly report its whereabouts. Together we went to work to determine its position; our calculations fairly tallied, and I was satisfied. I then ordered sail to be trimmed, and we proceeded on our voyage. When the ship had fairly started afresh I went into my cabin and examined the papers I had brought off the Casada. Those papers were, of course, written in Spanish. Though I speak Spanish very imperfectly, almost unintelligibly, I can make tolerable headway, with the help of a dictionary, when I read it. I possessed an English-Spanish dictionary, and I sat down to translate the Casada’s papers. Then it was that I discovered there were five thousand serons of cocoa among the cargo. I did not count those serons when I was on board.”
“I understand.”
“The particulars I have here,” said he, slapping the book, “were in the manifest; but there was more than cocoa and wool and tin in that ship—very much more. The cases in the after-hold were full of silver—I had hoped for gold when I sang out to my men to seek an ax; but silver it proved to be, and the papers I examined in my cabin told me that those cases contained in all five hundred and fifty thousand milled Spanish dollars of the value, in our money, of four shillings and ninepence apiece, though I am willing to reduce that quotation and call the sum, in English money, ninety-eight thousand pounds.”
I opened my eyes wide. “Ha!” said I, “now I think you need tell me no more. This brig is going to fetch the money.”
“That is the object of the voyage.”
“Your men as yet don’t know where they are bound to?”