“I can buy a schooner or a yacht and look natural about it, and no questions asked; and make a big show and live at the best hotels, and nothing thought of me having plenty of money.  But you two—­why, show a guinea, sober or drunk, and they’ll grab ye on suspicion ye stole it.  Ye’d look real nice, Mr. Buckrow, buying a ship to come back here for it, wouldn’t ye—­or mayhap ye’d leave that part of it to Petrak.”

“How’ll ye get away with it if yer so sharp about it?” demanded Buckrow.  “What can ye do outside what we can do—­hey, Thirkle?”

“I’ve got it all planned out, ye can bank on that.  I didn’t get this gold here without knowing what I was at, or how I was going to draw through.  That isn’t my way, as ye know.  I have in mind a sloop-rigged yacht, lying in Shanghai, waiting for a buyer.  Pretty little white thing she is, and I can get her for a song, and take enough of this with me to turn the job.

“I can play Meeker again, which you chaps don’t seem to know.  I told the Times man on the waterfront over the telephone, five minutes before we sailed, to make a personal item about how the Rev. Luther Meeker, missionary, would sail next week for Hong-Kong in the Taming, and to tell the shipping-office to reserve a ticket for me.  Nobody knows I went in the Kut Sang for sure, and I could drop into Manila to-morrow as Meeker, and not a man the wiser.

“We’ll buy this little yacht, and I’ll turn her into a missionary boat, buying her with funds furnished by the London Evangelical Society, as I’ll tell ’em.  I’ll call her the Bethlehem and cruise along the China coast, putting in at ports to hold services.  Then we’ll sneak away some day and drop down here, with chinks in the crew, and we’ll get this gold aboard in such way they won’t suspect what it is.

“Then it’s an easy matter to make away to any port we want and fill away for London in a liner, with the gold strewn along in the banks here and there, or packed with books or other junk and freighted.  How’s that, mates?”

“And when it’s all done we can go to the devil and you’ll take the gold.  I know the palaver, Thirkle.  If ye please, I’ll take my chances alone with the gold,” said Buckrow.

“Then hang!  I wash my hands of the two of ye, and may the devil mend ye!”

Thirkle raised his bound hands as he said this, and there was tragedy in his grim old face, and pity for the two on whom he had apparently pronounced the death-sentence.  But I could see in his shrewd eyes that he was acting a part—­he was laughing at them while pleading for liberty.

Petrak began to whimper, and he looked at Buckrow appealingly.

“Let him loose, Bucky,” he begged.  “Let Thirkle loose, or we’ll hang, as he says, and we’ll split it share and share alike.”

“Let him loose so he can do for us!” raged Buckrow.  “Let him loose so he can make off with it, and then knife us when it comes handy!  I know his black heart!”