“Yes, and be wrecked on some one of the hundred reefs and islands which make the route by the Philippines so dangerous!  No, Mr. Redfox, though it is of great importance for me to get to Melbourne as soon as possible, I shall not take any risks going that way.  We’ll go farther to the north through the Balintang, from there down between the Palau and Caroline Islands, on through by the Soloman Islands, and the Lousiade Archipelago.”

“We shall meet with dangerous seas that way, too, but if it’s the route you’ve decided on, that’s all there is to it.  What’s going on with the three hundred Chinamen in the steerage?”

“I don’t know.  Let them stay down where they are; they won’t suffocate yet awhile, and we’ll have peace on deck for an hour or two,” growled the Captain.

“With the last lot that came on board there was a little pigmy, barely ten years old,” said Gray.  “An old Chinaman carried him in his arms and said he was asleep.  It seemed to me that he was in a stupor, and I had more than half a mind to send them back, and then it occurred to me that we could use the lad in the kitchen, as the cook’s assistant.  I’ll get the boy, Captain, and let you see what you think of giving him over to the cook.  By cuffs and knocks perhaps he can be developed into something useful.”

“Go ahead, Gray,” answered the Captain.  “And you, Redfox, want my nephew, of whom this small Chinaman makes me think.”  Then he added in a low tone:  “Since our last talk I have thought the thing over.—­You are right.  It cannot be otherwise.  He must disappear, at least for a time, that is, until we are in possession of the money; later I will restore it to him.”

“Quite right.  And if—­by any accident—­he should fall from the rigging, or else—­”

“No, no, I won’t have him put to death.  God knows I wish my brother were alive.  The thought even that perhaps in my drunkenness I sanctioned the changing of his medicine, almost drives me mad.—­I am satisfied, though, that we will have to hide this boy for a time in some institution, and then announce to the authorities that at the shipwreck, which we contemplate having, he perished.”

“Captain, you are always for half-way measures.  But as you like, so long as you hold fast to our agreement—­the half of the property.”

“On the day on which I come into possession of the property, the half is yours.”

“Very well.  You have sworn to this, and now be assured that just so surely as you betray me, or attempt to cheat me out of the wages of my sins, you are a dead man, even if at that very hour I go to eternal damnation with you.”

“You may depend upon me.  Half and half, just as I have sworn.  And now I’ll go for my nephew.”

With these words the Captain stepped into the cabin.  Through this cabin ran a partition, and in one corner of the smaller part Willy had hung his hammock.  So soundly had he slept, that his first knowledge that the “St. George” was under sail came when he noticed the motion of the ship, and heard the swishing of the water.