"Suppose not, Bert. Not if he could help it."
" 'Course he wouldn't. Now then, tell you what I reckon, Dukey: I don't reckon we ought to let on that we believe him about old Ern taking it.'
"I don't see it makes much difference, mate. We're three to one, like I said before. If we can't make him cough up a good share of it, my name ain't Dukey Smith. I'll very soon put the fear o' Gawd into him."
The little man shook his head irritably, impatient of the slowness of the Skipper's wits: "You don't want to end up in the quod in Canterbury, do you, Dukey? Suppose we take most of it off of him, then put him ashore in Whitstable; he'll very likely go straight to his owners or the Customs and tell 'em all about it. He'd have nothing to lose, see? Then where should we be? Behind bars, mate, that's where." He paused to let the warning sink in, then went on with his nagging questions: "Have you thought, Dukey, about what you are going to do with him? And with them jools?'
Dukey had not got Bert's quick, chess-player's wits, and had not realized that their apparently easy triumph would bring these worrying problems in its wake. A horrible suspicion suddenly struck him, and he turned frightened eyes towards Bert. "Bert! You don't mean...?" He nodded towards the cabin and drew the edge of his flat hand quickly across his throat.
"No! 'Course I don't! What you take me for, a blinking child-murderer! I got an old boy o' me own very near his age, don't forget." Dukey relaxed with a deep sigh of relief, as Bert went on: "All the same, you know, we can't just let him go — not till we got rid of everything. This is what I reckon we best do: say we don't believe him about old Ern. Put the wind up him good and proper about having these things on him. Then we'll p'raps give him a few sovrins to keep him quiet — so that he's in it with us, as you might say — and then we'll keep him as another hand on board, so as we can keep an eye on him for a few months.'
"He wouldn't sign on board our old smack — not an officer, same as he was."
"Dukey," said the Mate patiently, "you leave him to me. Time I get finished with him, he'll sign anything. And another thing," he murmured, as they moved towards the companion-way, "ain't no good us giving old Shiner too much. He don't know what to do with it himself, and you know what an everlasting old wind-bag his Mum is. The whole town'd know about it in half an hour if he turned up home with some of them rings."
The two young men were still hunched silent and motionless under the round yellow glow of the cabin lamp.
"Now then, mister," said Bert in a serious tone, "what was this you was saying about some other feller ? What you say his name was ?"
"Jordan. He was a seaman; big, dark chap."
"You ever heard of him, Dukey?"
"Never," said Dukey emphatically, catching on just in time. "No chap that name ever lived in Whitstable in my time."
"Where is this feller now, anyway?" asked the Mate.
"He fell overboard when she broke in half, I think. He went down on deck in the afternoon, and I never saw him again."
Bert Anderson turned to the Skipper with a satirical grin and said: "What do you think o' that for a yarn, Dukey? I suppose this chap Jordan's ghost come up the shrouds and put the jools in your pocket after that?" The Skipper removed his pipe, and spat on the deck without speaking. "Yeah," went on Bert indignantly, "and that's what I think, too. Fancy running down a poor feller what's dead. Gawd rest him, and can't defend hisself! You blasted young jumped-up officers are all the same. What do you lot care about poor old Jack, what does all the work?"
Jim clenched his fists in desperation. "But it's true — everything I've told you. I can't prove it, but it's true! You must believe me!" He was nearly weeping with fear, bewilderment and frustration. For the third time in the last few days, he seemed to be struggling in the dark in a bottomless shifting quicksand — first the log, then the wreck, now this, where the menace was all the more horrible because it was all so baffling and strange.
"Same as you say," Dukey said, "you can't prove nothing. If we don't believe you, what chance you got when we take you up to the magistrate? He ain't met old Admiral Crawford yet, has he, Bert? What do you reckon that cantankerous old swab would give him? Ten years?'
"More like twenty if he had the gout that day!" said Bert, laughing, but watching Jim closely through narrowed eyes. It was the moment to strike.
He placed his hand with a friendly gesture on Jim's shoulder and smiled at him as he raised his white face: ЭCheer up, matey, cheer up. P'raps it won't come to that. We don't want to shop you. Let the blinking old bluebottles do their own dirty work. We'll git you ashore and git rid of the stuff for you at the best price we can git. Only there'll have to be one or two conditions. I mean, to start with, you can't expect us to do it for nothing. We're family men, see — look at the risks we're running for you. We'll have to split all this up between us."
For answer, Jim swept his hand violently across the table, brushing hundreds of pounds' worth of gold and diamonds away from him on to the deck: "Take it all! Get the damned stuff out of my sight! I don't want to see it again!"
Dukey's great hand gripped his forearm like a vice: "Oh no you don't,' he said. "I ain't having that. We're all in this together. You'll have some of them sovrins if I have to ram 'em down your throat!"
Bert broke in soothingly, delighted at the way things were going: "Ah well, I daresay we can all agree on summat suitable. Now the other thing is, we'll all have to stick together for a while, so what say we sign you on as a fourth hand for the Maud? Just until everything's disposed of and things have died down a bit."
"Sign on with you?" Jim could hardly believe his ears. "You must be harmy to suggest it."
"Oh yeah?" said Dukey in a fury. "Well, what exactly was you going to do, mister high-and-mighty snivelling brassbounder? Run home to your Mum and tell her about the nasty men you bin with?'
The angry question brought Jim up with a jolt. Another dreary wasteland of misery lay ahead. What exactly was he going to do when he got ashore? He realized with some surprise that it was a question he had not thought about since Sardis had first shuddered to a stop and the wave had flung the poor broken body of the helmsman at his feet. Ever since that snapping of the safe, secure routine of big-ship life he had done nothing but survive from one minute to the next. Well then, what was he going to do ? What would Brodie have done ? He would have wired the owners from Whitstable; they would have sent his fare to Edinburgh, and he would have joined another ship from there.
Jim tried to see himself following this procedure, and knew at once in his heart that he would never do it. He did not waver, or debate it with himself, for there was no need. Could he, the criminally stupid and careless coward who had killed the Sardis, her crew and most of her passengers, ever face — alone — an official Board of Enquiry? He could imagine the keen, sober faces of the assessors facing him from their high bench as he stumbled through his story — faces that knew the sea and all its ways, faces that instantly detected every futile lie. They were the wet, drowned faces of White and Brodie.
Neither could he see himself in the rich, lofty, quiet offices of the Company in Princes Street; he could never again face squarely the shrewd, bald old men around the magnificent polished table, the Directors who had engaged him and entrusted him with a tiny share in the management and safety of their newest and proudest ship.
"All right, then," he said. "I'll sign. You can give me what you like. I don't care."
With that the taut silence exploded into relaxed talk and laughter. "That's the idea, matey, that's the idea," said Bert. "You won't find it a bad old life, considering." Inside he was bubbling over with triumph at the victory of his cunning: "Got you, mister, got you, for all your posh talk and schooling. You got to get up early to get round old Bert." But he said, amiably enough: "What about a drink on it, Dukey? We got plenty!"