“The sun will have crossed his meridian if you don’t hurry up,” said I.
“Vot der doyvel vhas der sun to you, sir?”
I turned my back upon him and continued to pace the deck, not choosing that he should fasten a quarrel upon me—as yet, at all events.
His insolence, however, helped me in my reflections by extinguishing him as a condition to be borne in mind. I had been influenced by compunction; now I had none. I watched the fat beast climb the companion ladder, and after him, and then over the side into the seething water to lie drowned forever, went all compunction. How could Greaves work with such a man? How could he live in a ship with such a man? So, opening the door of my mind, I kicked Mate Van Laar headlong out of my contemplation, and resolution did not then seem very hard to form.
I sat down, and said to Galloon:
“What shall I do?”
Galloon stood upon his hind legs, and, resting his fore feet upon my knees, looked up at me with eyes which beamed with cordial invitation and affectionate solicitude.
“What shall I do, Galloon?” said I. “Six thousand pounds is a large sum of money for a man of my degree. Can I doubt that the dollars are in the ship inside the cave? If Tulp is to be convinced, I should. There was the Spanish manifest; there were the cases beheld by Greaves’ own eyes. Why should Greaves invent this yarn? I will stake my life, Galloon, upon its being true. Six thousand pounds! And d’ye know, my noble dog, that there is more money in six thousand pounds than your master’s reckoning of the Spanish dollar swells the amount to? In Jamaica the Spanish dollar passes for six-and-eightpence; in parts of North America for eight shillings; and in the Windward Islands for nine shillings;” and then I told Galloon what I should do when I received the six thousand pounds: how I would buy me a little house at Deal and a boat, live like a gentleman on the interest of what was left, and spend the time merrily in fishing and sailing.
The dog listened with attention. At times I seemed to catch a slight inclination of the head, as though he nodded approvingly. I counted upon my fingers all the advantages, which must attend my acceptance of Greaves’ offer. First, the post of mate at ten pounds a month, with a voyage before me of at least twelve months; then my association with a man whose company was exceedingly agreeable to me, between whom and me there must always be such a bond of sympathy as nothing but the prodigious and pathetic services we had done each other could establish; then the possibility—nay, the more than possibility, of my receiving six thousand pounds as my dividend of the adventure. These and the like considerations I summed up. What was the per contra? The forfeiture of a few weeks of holiday ashore! Spalding’s debt to me stood good, and would be paid whenever I turned up to receive the money. My being seized by the press-gang, the boat being stove, and my being picked up insensible and carried away into the ocean—all this was no fault of mine. Therefore Spalding would pay me the money.
“Galloon, I will accept,” said I, and jumped up; and the dog fell to cutting capers about me, springing here and there, like a dog in front of a trotting horse, and barking joyously.