gestures. Finally I went on deck to cool. The sky was overcast I
discovered all the men were in a knot forward, staring at the faint
quivering luminosity that had spread over the heaps of quap, a
phosphorescence such as one sees at times on rotting wood. And about
the beach east and west there were patches and streaks of something like
diluted moonshine....

In the small hours I was still awake and turning over scheme after
scheme in my mind whereby I might circumvent the captain's opposition. I
meant to get that quap aboard if I had to kill some one to do it. Never
in my life had I been so thwarted! After this intolerable voyage! There
came a rap at my cabin door and then it opened and I made out a bearded
face. "Come in," I said, and a black voluble figure I could just see
obscurely came in to talk in my private ear and fill my cabin with its
whisperings and gestures. It was the captain. He, too, had been awake
and thinking things over. He had come to explain--enormously. I lay
there hating him and wondering if I and Pollack could lock him in
his cabin and run the ship without him. "I do not want to spoil dis
expedition," emerged from a cloud of protestations, and then I was able
to disentangle "a commission--shush a small commission--for special
risks!" "Special risks" became frequent. I let him explain himself out.
It appeared he was also demanding an apology for something I had said.
No doubt I had insulted him generously. At last came definite offers. I
broke my silence and bargained.

"Pollack!" I cried and hammered the partition.

"What's up?" asked Pollack.

I stated the case concisely.

There came a silence.

"He's a Card," said Pollack. "Let's give him his commission. I don't
mind."

"Eh?" I cried.

"I said he was a Card, that's all," said Pollack. "I'm coming."

He appeared in my doorway a faint white figure joined our vehement
whisperings.

We had to buy the captain off; we had to promise him ten per cent. of
our problematical profits. We were to give him ten per cent. on what we
sold the cargo for over and above his legitimate pay, and I found in my
out-bargained and disordered state small consolation in the thought that
I, as the Gordon-Nasmyth expedition, was to sell the stuff to myself as
Business Organisations. And he further exasperated me by insisting on
having our bargain in writing. "In the form of a letter," he insisted.

"All right," I acquiesced, "in the form of a letter. Here goes