"Yes," he said, coolly; "we're counting up the dollars, old chap--divide on shore, you know--fair and square. Come, don't look blue. The Dutchman won't miss them, and old Joey's made his own bargain. We can rig up a tale between us and buy the crowd at Ascension--good joke, isn't it, Lorimer?" "Why, yes," said I; "but, as my port's not Ascension, I don't quite see the point of it. Come, Nicolson, don't be a fool. Just put that lid on and help me to go over the chart. We mustn't keep the captain waiting--you know what he is." Very lazily, I thought, he put the lid on the box of ingots, and, laughing at the others, he came aft with me. When I took up the chart to make a dead reckoning by the help of his own calculations during my watch off, he laughed again in his peculiar way. "It's all right," he said; "due west for Ascension, as you wished." "Nicolson," I said, quietly, "you've been playing a fool's game; what does it mean?" He sat on the gunnel and looked me full in the face. "Means that our port is Ascension," he said. I kept my temper. "Nicolson," I said, "do you wish me to think you a scoundrel?" "Think what you like; there are four in this launch who don't mean Joey Castle to touch these dollars again." I turned away from him, wrestling with my temper. "'Bout ship!" I cried. Barlow took no notice whatsoever. Then my hand went to my pistol-pocket and I knew the worst. They had taken the revolver while I slept. I was one against four, and the launch was running over a calm sea to Ascension Isle and the discovery which inevitably awaited us there. III. We steamed all that day upon a fair sea, but at sundown the truth came out. We had not coal enough for another hour's run and were still a hundred miles from Ascension. I watched the faces of the men when Nicolson told them. They seemed to care nothing. The gold greed was upon them; the ingots were piled up everywhere about the launch and the hands hugged them as children, dearer than anything afloat or ashore. Nicolson got curses for his pains and went below again. [Illustration: "THE GOLD GREED WAS UPON THEM."] I watched the scene gloomily from the stern--it was beginning to dawn upon me that no man would see land again; and when an hour and a half had passed and the engines of the launch suddenly stopped I could not call myself a pessimist. The hands themselves, awed by the mishap, began to talk of sailing ships which would pick them up and of a story they must have ready. Nicolson was to be the captain of a ship which had stranded; Barlow was his mate. They did not name me; and, as the day is my witness, I believe they intended to murder me.