“I know pretty well why you wanted Gid Ward along on the trip.  I’ve got sort of a dim idea why you invited the Hecly fire department; and perhaps you know what we’re goin’ to do with all that dunnage on them trucks.  But what in the devil you’re goin’ to do with that cust-fired old elephant—­and she advertisin’ this thing to the four corners of God’s creation—­well, it’s got my top-riggin’ snarled.”

“Sooner you get your crew to work loadin’, sooner you’ll get away from sassy questions,” replied Hiram, serenely, wagging his head at the intrusive crowd massing along the dock’s edge.  And the Cap’n, impressed by the logic of the advice, and stung by the manner in which Hiram had emphasized “sassy questions,” pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes, and became for once more in his life the autocrat of the quarter-deck.

An hour later the packet was sluggishly butting waves with her blunt bows in the lower harbor, Cap’n Sproul hanging to the weather-worn wheel, and roaring perfectly awful profanity at the clumsy attempts of his makeshift crew.

“I’ve gone to sea with most everything in the line of cat-meat on two legs,” he snarled to Hiram, who leaned against the rail puffing at a long cigar with deep content, “but I’ll be billy-hooed if I ever saw six men before who pulled on the wrong rope every time, and pulled the wrong way on every wrong rope.  You take them and—­and that elephant,” he added, grimly returning to that point of dispute, “and we’ve got an outfit that I’m ashamed to have the Atlantic Ocean see me in company with.”

“Don’t let that elephant fuss you up,” said Hiram, complacently regarding Imogene couched in the waist.

“But there ain’t northin’ sensible you can do with her.”

Hiram cocked his cigar pertly.

“A remark, Cap’n Sproul, that shows you need a general manager with foresight like me.  When you get to hoistin’ dirt in buckets she’ll be worth a hundred dollars an hour, and beat any steam-winch ever operated.”

Again the Cap’n felt resentment boil sourly within him.  This doling of plans and plot to him seemed to be a reflection on his intelligence.

“Reckon it’s buried deep, do you?” inquired Colonel Ward, a flavor of satiric skepticism in his voice.  He was gazing quizzically forward to where Mr. Bodge sat on the capstan’s drumhead, his nose elevated with wistful eagerness, his whiskers flapping about his ears, his eyes straight ahead.

“It’s buried deep,” said Hiram, with conviction.  “It’s buried deep, because there’s a lot of it, and it was worth while to bury it deep.  A man like Cap Kidd wa’n’t scoopin’ out a ten-foot hole and buryin’ a million dollars and goin’ off and leavin’ it to be pulled like a pa’snip by the first comer.”

“A million dollars!” echoed the Colonel.

“Northin’ less!  History says it.  There was a lot of money flyin’ around the world in them days, and Cap Kidd knew how to get holt of it.  The trouble is with people, Colonel, they forget that there was a lot of gold in the world before the ‘Forty-niners’ got busy.”