I was not permitted to row out to the _Laughing Lass_ without escort. Therefore I never attempted to visit her again. The men were not anxious to do so, their awe of the captain made them only too glad to escape his notice. That empty shell of a past reputation was my only hope. It shielded the arms and ammunition. As I look back on it now, the period seems to me to be one of merely potential trouble. The men had not taken the pains to crystallise their ideas. I really think their compelling emotion was that of curiosity. They wanted to _see_. It needed a definite impulse to change that desire to one of greed. The impulse came from Percy Darrow and his idle talk of voodoos. As usual he was directing his remarks to the sullen Nigger. "Voodoos?" he said. "Of course there are. Don't fool yourself for a minute on that. There are good ones and bad ones. You can tame them if you know how, and they will do anything you want them to." Pulz chuckled in his throat. "You don't believe it?" drawled the assistant turning to him. "Well, it's so. You know that heavy box we are so careful of? Well, that's got a tame voodoo in it." The others laughed. "What he like?" asked the Nigger gravely. "He's a fine voodoo, with wavery arms and green eyes, and red glows." Watching narrowly its effect he swung off into one of the genuine old crooning voodoo songs, once so common down South, now so rarely heard. No one knows what the words mean--they are generally held to be charm-words only--a magic gibberish. But the Nigger sprang across the fire like lightning, his face altered by terror, to seize Darrow by the shoulders. "Doan you! Doan you!" he gasped, shaking the assistant violently back and forth. "Dat he King Voodoo song! Dat call him all de voodoo--all!" He stared wildly about in the darkness as though expecting to see the night thronged. There was a moment of confusion. Eager for any chance I hissed under my breath; "Danger! Look out!" I could not tell whether or not Darrow heard me. He left soon after. The mention of the chest had focussed the men's interest. "Well," Pulz began, "we've been here on this spot o' hell for a long time." "A year and five months," reckoned Thrackles. "A man can do a lot in that time." "If he's busy." "They've been busy." "Yes." "Wonder what they've done?" There was no answer to this, and the sea lawyer took a new tack. "I suppose we're all getting double wages." "That's so." "And that's say four hunder' for us and Mr. Eagen here. I suppose the Old Man don't let the schooner go for nothing." "Two hundred and fifty a month," said I, and then would have had the words back. They cried out in prolonged astonishment. "Seventeen months," pursued the logician after a few moments. He scratched with a stub of lead. "That makes over eleven thousand dollars since we've been out. How much do you suppose his outfit stands him?" he appealed to me. "I'm sure I can't tell you," I replied shortly.