“Probably not,” said Onslow. He lay back in his chair with linked fingers behind his head. “Look here, Kettle, if you want to shoot me, pull out your gun and get it over. Then you and Sullivan can run the cargo where you please, and share it how you like. But that’s the only way you’ll make me consent to your taking what’s beyond your due. Shelf trusted me, and, by Jove, I’m going to act fairly by Shelf if he were a ten times bigger thief than I know him to be already. Now then, jump quick; let’s have it over.” They were in the chart-house. Captain Kettle puckered his head for a minute’s thought, and then, getting up, shut and locked the starboard door. He took that key, and the key also of the other door, which gave upon the head of the companion-way, and handed them both to Onslow. “Now, sir,” said he, “you lock me and the donkeyman in here, and go and do as you like. But I advise you to take your infernal gold somewhere out of this ship, because as sure as it’s there when I next come out of this room, so sure do I go and loot it. That’s my bunk there, bang above the place where it’s stowed, and I’ve sat on top of those sovereigns like a hen every watch below I’ve had this voyage, and heard ’em chinkle, and wondered what they’d hatch out into. You perhaps, understand what I mean?” Onslow nodded. “Then take the synch from me, sir, and cart your boxes away as quick as you can. Poor men like me shouldn’t have big temptations. It isn’t healthy—for their neighbors. No, by James! Here, get out of this, Mr. Onslow, or I shall be doing you a violence yet; and mind you lock the door. Donkey-man, you hound, there’s whisky in that bottom locker. Take the clean glass yourself, and give me the dirty one.” Onslow read the little man’s mind to a comma, and bowed gravely without speaking. Then he did as he was bidden with the door and key, and went below, and began the Herculean task of bringing up the iron-bound specie boxes one by one out of the cabin where they had ridden from the Mersey dock. He placed them in the port quarter boat, which he had lowered from its davits flush with the bridge deck rail; and when she was loaded he put the boat into the river. He rowed her far up stream, past bights and bayous, till he found a narrow canal leading off the main river through mangrove clumps, and held on up that till the boat reached a great round vat of black water, walled all around with solemn cypress-trees, and roofed to darkness by their fringing branches. One by one the boxes were raised on the gunwale and launched with a sullen plunge; and it seemed an age before the foul-smelling bubbles came up to tell that they had sounded bottom. And then away back for another load. And then for a third. The inky water closed over all, and not so much as a splinter from one of the boxes floated on the surface.