“Sit down. I’ve a message for the crew. I am sick of that huge, bloody-minded Bol’s yaw-yaw-yawling jaw. Your English is mine. You’ll answer some questions, perhaps?” “I will, sir.” “The scheme’s this: we said to Amsterdam Island, there unload the silver and bury it. Why Amsterdam Island?” “Because it’s straight on the road to Australia, uninhabited, and never visited.” “Why do you not proceed direct to Botany Bay, keeping the money aboard?” “I’ll tell you,” he answered, putting down his cap, leaning forward, and addressing me with his forefinger on the palm of his left hand. “It’s a matter we’ve argued out for’ads, and we’re all agreed; for this reason. There’ll be nothing easier than to wreck the vessel within a day’s walk of Port Jackson. If we keeps the money aboard we shall be casting it away with the brig. Is the risk of our losing the money along with the brig to be entertained? Why, certainly an’ of course _not_. The money’s to be hid first. D’ye ask, why we don’t hide it on that part of the coast where we cast the brig away? Because the privacy there aint the privacy of an uninhabited island; there’s savages and settlers a-knocking about; runaway convicks and chaps in sarch of ’em; and no man would reckon the money safe until it was dug up. Next step, then, after losing the brig, will be to tramp it to Port Jackson, shipwrecked men. There Teach has a friend. That friend’s an old pal of Teach’s, and when last heard of was a-doing well. He’ll find us in a schooner or some small vessel, and when we’ve got the money he’ll show us the ropes.” “What’s Teach’s friend?” “Dunno, sir.” “Was he a convict?” “Dunno, sir.” “You think this a devilish clever scheme, don’t you?” “It’ll come off--it’ll come off,” he answered. “I’ll work you up twenty safer, surer, and easier schemes than that,” said I. “Maybe; we likes our’n,” he answered, with a quiet grin and a slow look at the lady Aurora, who was listening with the strained, vexed, impatient look of one who hears but understands little of what passes. “Amsterdam Island is in the Indian Ocean,” said I. “So they say.” “No vessel under three hundred tons may navigate the Indian seas. Do you know that?” “When I was in a Company’s ship I think I heerd something of the sort, but there’s no law where Amsterdam Island is, and if there was--we aren’t pirates, anyhow;” and he made as if he would rise. “It’s a damnably wicked scheme, a hanging scheme, and as stupid as it’s wicked. D’ye know what Yan Bol told me to-day?... Friend, I’m an Englishman talking to an Englishman; and this threat is an accursed Dutchman’s. Yan Bol told me to-day that if I refused to navigate the brig to Amsterdam Island, you men would send me adrift in one of the boats, along with the two Spaniards.”