“Don’t worry me, Bucky,” said Thirkle quietly.

“Don’t worry of ye!  Don’t bother, Thirkle.  Yer sharp, but yer good as dead now.  It’s me that’ll be the fine gent and wear walkin’-about clothes, and have my drink and comfort, and nobody to split on me.  I’ll play yer own game, and leave ye here to rot.  How like ye that, Thirkle?”

“Ye are on the wrong tack, Bucky,” he said quietly, without lifting his head.  “Dead on the wrong tack and shoal water ahead.”

“Nasty weather ahead for you, Thirkle—­never fret about Bucky.”

“Dead on the wrong tack,” repeated Thirkle, as if talking to himself.  “I looked to you for better than this, and trusted you too.  I wanted to play fair with ye, Bucky, because ye’ve got brains, which a man wouldn’t think to hear ye now.”

“Brains enough not to be cut down like a bullock by Thirkle, when the last comes to the last.”

“Reddy and Jim were not fit men to trust with a heap of gold like this, Bucky, and it’s you that knows the truth of what I say.  They would have the whole thing cut open in a week once they got into some port with their pockets full of sovereigns and their skins full of rum, and their mouths full of babble in the public houses of their wealth and how smart they be.

“First we’d know Petrak would be telling how we took the Southern Cross and the Legaspi and the Kut Sang, best of all, and last.  Now wouldn’t that be the way with him once he got at the gin?  Hey, Bucky?”

“He could be watched and his lip kept shut,” said Buckrow.

“Would you want to trust yer neck to Petrak’s close lip?  Tell me that, Bucky.  Could ye sleep with Petrak and his bragging, and Long Jim and his bragging, and the two of ’em whispering together, considering the friends they make when drunk.  Why, Bucky, man!  Long Jim would tell the whole tale to a barmaid for a smile, as he come near telling that girl in Malta, with the whole Mediterranean fleet ashore in Valetta.

“If it wasn’t for me we’d been in a jam, what with the stories that were going the rounds about us then, and a P.O. out of the Implacable trying to chum with me.  I wanted to play fair with ye, Bucky, because yer too smart to let the drink get the better of ye—­but what’s the use.  I don’t want to argue with ye.  Go on and play it alone if ye think ye can.”

“Well, right ye are,” said Buckrow scornfully.  “That’s the true words ye speak now, Thirkle.  Ye don’t want to argue with me.  Right-o—­a man can’t argue with cold steel—­and what’s more, ye won’t, if I’m Bad Buckrow.  I know ye’ve got a smooth lingo when ye get in a trap, but ye can’t squirm out this time.  I’ll hold the weather of ye this commission, Thirkle.”

“Ye’ll never get away with it, Bucky.  It takes more brains than ye’ve got to handle half a ton of gold.  Not that ye ain’t got the brains so much as ye don’t know how to handle ’em.  There’s many a man foremast with more brains than his skipper, but that don’t make him skipper.”