Something to this effect he intimated to Phinuit.

“Don’t worry about this lot,” that one replied.  “They’re wise birds, tough as they make ’em, ready for anything; hand-picked down to the last coal-passer.  The skipper isn’t a man to take fool chances, and when he recruited this crew, he took nobody he couldn’t answer for.  They’re more than well paid, and they’ll do as they’re told and keep their traps as tight as clams’.”

“But, I take it, they were signed on before this present voyage was thought of; while you seem to imply that Captain Monk anticipated having to depend upon these good fellows in unlawful enterprises.”

“Maybe he did, at that,” Phinuit promptly surmised, with a bland eye.  “I wouldn’t put it past him.  The skipper’s deep, and I’ll never tell you what he had in the back of his mind when he let Friend Boss persuade him to take command of a pleasure yacht.  Because I don’t know.  If it comes to that, the owner himself never confided in me just what the large idea was in buying this ark for a plaything.  Yachting for fun is one thing; running a young floating hotel is something else again.”

“Then you don’t believe the grandiose illusions due to sudden wealth were alone responsible?”

“I don’t know.  That little man has a mind of his own, and even if I do figure on his payroll as confidential secretary, he doesn’t tell me everything he knows.”

“Still,” said Lanyard drily, “one cannot think you can complain that he has hesitated to repose his trust in you.”

To this Phinuit made no reply other than a non-committal grunt; and presently Lanyard added: 

“It is hardly possible—­eh?—­that the officers and crew know nothing of what is intended with all the champagne you have recently taken aboard.”

“They’re no fools.  They know there’s enough of the stuff on board to do a Cunarder for the next ten years, and they know, too, there’s no lawful way of getting it into the States.”

“So, then!  They know that.  How much more may they not know?”

Phinuit turned a startled face to him.  “What’s that?” he demanded sharply.

“May they not have exercised their wits as well on the subject of your secret project, my friend?”

“What are you getting at?”

“One is wondering what these ‘wise birds, as tough as they make them’ would do if they thought you were—­as you say—­getting away with something at their expense as well as the owner’s.”

“What have you seen or heard?”

“Positively nothing.  This is merely idle speculation.”

“Well!” Phinuit sighed sibilantly and relaxed.  “Let’s hope they never find out.”

By dawn of the fourth day the gale had spent its greatest strength; what was left of it subsided steadily till, as the seafaring phrase has it, the wind went down with the sun.  Calm ensued.  Lanyard woke up the next morning to view from his stateroom deadlights vistas illimitable of flat blue flawed by hardly a wrinkle; only by watching the horizon was one aware of the slow swell of the sea, its sole perceptible motion.  And all day long the Sybarite trudged on an even keel with only the wind of her way to flutter the gay awnings of the quarterdeck, while the waters sheared by her stem ran down her sides hissing resentment of this violation of their absolute tranquillity.