“It don’t take no skipper to handle cargo of this sort,” said Buckrow.

“Ye can’t do it alone, Bucky.  How about coming back for it?  What’ll ye tell the crew that comes back with ye?  Didn’t I plan it all out to get it?  I planned this job and made fair weather of it, didn’t I?

“You and the others couldn’t done it alone, you know that.  Well, ye won’t get away with it, ye can be sure of that.  It isn’t in ye, Bucky, to do the job.  The hardest is to come yet, as ye’ll see when ye go about getting this away all clear.”

“Never ye fret about me, Thirkle.  I turned a couple of tricks afore ever I crossed yer bows, lay to that.  I ain’t the dog of a sailor ye take me for.  I was a gent once, and I’ll be a gent again, and no thanks to ye, Thirkle.  It don’t take no brains to spend a guinea at a time, even if a man knows he has a house full of ’em, and I can be respectable, too, and take my drink alone in my own house.”

“I’ll grant ye are no fool, Bucky.  It all looks nice and easy, but who took ye out of the gutter in Sarawak?  Where would ye be to-day if it wasn’t for Thirkle?  Tell me that, Bucky?”

Buckrow puffed at his cigar a minute, and seemed to consider the matter before replying.

“I was down and out right enough then, Thirkle, but I ain’t the kind to stay down long, Thirkle.  What with fever and jail, and a bad cut in the hip, I was in a bad way, but no fault of mine, only my cussed luck.  I’ve had my hard goin’ in my life, and now I’m to take it snug.”

“The hangman was around the corner that time in Sarawak, and close-hauled on a course that would fetch him alongside ye in no time,” said Thirkle, looking up and smiling wearily.

“Never ye mind about the hangman, Mr. Thirkle!  He was around the corner with ye, too, for that, and more than once.  Ye mind Hong-Kong?  Who saved ye from the hangman in Hong-Kong?  I ask ye that.  It was Bucky; but that had no stop on ye here when ye planned to do for me.  I saved ye from the hangman, too, and now the score is even, and ye can’t whine if I come yer own game on ye.”

“I don’t deny ye served me a turn in Hong-Kong, Bucky, and that’s why I was to play fair and above board with ye here.  Ye think ye know me, and who I am, and who I was, but ye don’t, Bucky, and if ye did ye’d have more thought about what yer up to here.  Thirkle I’m known as, and as Thirkle I’ll die, and I’m rough in my ways and language because I have fallen into those ways with my men.

“When I’m a sailor I’m as sailors are, and when I’m a parson I know how to play it, but ye’ve never seen me as a fine gentleman.  Maybe ye’d like to know who I was before I was Thirkle and got to be the Devil’s Admiral, as they call me for the want of something better, seeing I have played my game careful and kept them all in the dark.”

“It’s naught to me who ye was or are, Thirkle.  Ye can’t oil me out of it with all yer fine talk—­I’m to do for ye when I’m minded, and yer slick talk can’t save ye.”