“Yes, and it’ll have to be not long after dark.  We ought to drop the hook at midnight.  Then”—­the mutter was broken with hopeful anxiety—­“then you’ve decided you’ll stand in with me, Mr. Lanyard?”

“But of course!  What else can one do?  As you have so fairly pointed out:  what is either of us without the other?”

“And it’s understood:  you’re to lift the stuff, I’m to take care of it till we can slip ashore, we’re to make our getaway together—­and the split’s to be fifty-fifty, fair and square?”

“I ask nothing better.”

“Where’s your hand?”

Two hands found each other blindly and exchanged a firm and inspiring clasp—­while Lanyard gave thanks for the night that saved his face from betraying his mind.

Another deep sigh sounded a note of apprehensions at an end.  A gruff chuckle followed.

“Whit Monk!  He’ll learn something about the way to treat old friends.”  And all at once the mutter merged into a vindictive hiss:  “Him with his airs and graces, his fine clothes and greasy manners, putting on the lah-de-dah over them that’s stood by him when he hadn’t a red and was glad to cadge drinks off spiggoties in hells like the Colonel’s at Colon—­him!”

But Lanyard had been listening only with his ears; he hadn’t the slightest interest in Mr. Mussey’s resentment of the affectations of Captain Monk.  For now his mad scheme had suddenly assumed a complexion of comparative simplicity; given the co-operation of the chief engineer, all Lanyard would need to contribute would be a little headwork, a little physical exertion, a little daring—­and complete indifference, which was both well warranted and already his, to abusing the confidence of Mr. Mussey.

“But about this affair to-morrow night,” he interrupted impatiently:  “attend to me a little, if you please, my friend.  Can you give me any idea where we are, or will, approximately, at midnight to-night?”

“What’s that go to do——?”

“Perhaps I ask only for my own information.  But it may be that I have a plan.  If we are to work together harmoniously, Mr. Mussey, you must learn to have a little confidence in me.”

“Beg your pardon,” said an humble mutter.  “We ought to be somewhere off Nantucket Shoals Lightship.”

“And the weather:  have you sufficient acquaintance with these latitudes to foretell it, even roughly?”

“Born and brought up in Edgartown, made my first voyage on a tramp out of New Bedford:  guess I know something about the weather in these latitudes!  The wind’s been hauling round from sou’west to south all day.  If it goes on to sou’east, it’ll likely be thick to-morrow, with little wind, no sea to speak of, and either rain or fog.”

“So!  Now to do what I will have to do, I must have ten minutes of absolute darkness.  Can that be arranged?”

“Absolute darkness?” The mutter had a rising inflexion of dubiety.  “How d’you mean?”