‘Because I can trust ye. You’re a gentleman, and you’ll be satisfied with the share we’ll settle upon. Where am I to find a sailor capable of helping me to navigate this ship that I could feel any confidence in, that I could talk to about this here gold with the sartinty that he wouldn’t play me some devilish trick? _Can’t_ ye see my position. Mr. Dugdale?’ he cried with a wild almost pathetic air of eagerness and pleading. ‘I can’t work out such a traverse as this alone. I must have somebody alongside of me that I can confide in. Once the money’s aboard, we can rid ourselves of the Kanaka crew, and ship a company of white men for the run to the Mauritius. The gold’ll be aboard, and it’ll be my secret and yourn.’ Though I never doubted for a moment that all this was the emission of some mad, fixed humour, I was yet willing to go on questioning him as if I was interested, partly that he might think me sincere in my profession of belief in his tale, and partly that I might plumb his intentions to the very bottom; for it was certain that, lie or no lie, his fancy of buried treasure was a profound reality to his poor brains, and that it would influence him, as though it were the truth, to heaven alone knew what issue of hardship and fatefulness and even destruction to Miss Temple and me. ‘I presume,’ said I, assuming an off-hand manner, ‘that your men have signed for the run to Port Louis and back?’ ‘Well, sir?’ ‘How are you going to get rid of them at Rio?’ ‘Half of them will run, and the rest I shall know how to start.’ ‘But what excuse will you have for putting into Rio?’ ‘Want of a chief mate,’ he answered, in a deep sepulchral voice. This threw me all aback again, and thoroughly confounded me. Indeed, I was well enough acquainted with the sea to guess that he was within the truth when he spoke of an easy quittance of the crew at Rio; and assuredly in the want of a chief mate he could find a reason for heading to that South American port, against which it would be impossible for his sailors to find anything to urge, supposing, a thing not to be taken into account, that they had it in their power to insist upon his sailing straight for Mauritius.