ng blood seems
congenial. "What's the use of being at all that bother? It's sure to
bring some. The skipper will resist, and so'll the old Don. What then?
We'll be compelled to knock them on the head all the same, or toss them
overboard. For my part, I don't see the object of making such a worry
about it; and still say, let's stop their wind at once!"

"Dash it, man!" cries Striker, hitherto only a listener, but a backer of
Harry Blew; "you 'pear to 'a been practisin' a queery plan in jobs o'
this sort. Mr Gomez hev got a better way o't, same as I've myself seed
in the Australian bush, wheres they an't so bloodthirsty. When they
stick up a chap theer, so long's he don't cut up nasty, they settle
things by splicin' him to a tree, an' leavin' him to his meditashuns.
Why can't we do the same wi' the skipper, an' the Don, an' the darkey--
supposin' any o' 'em to show reefractry?"

"That's it!" exclaims Davis, strengthening the proposal thus endorsed by
his chum, Striker. "My old pal's got the correct idea of sich things."

"Besides," continues the older of the ex-convicts, "this job seems to me
simple enuf. We want the swag, an' some may want the weemen. Well, we
can git both 'ithout the needcessity o' doin' murder!"

Striker's remonstrance sounds strange--under the circumstances,
serio-comical.

"What might you call murder?" mockingly asks Padilla. "Is there any
difference between their getting their breath stopped by drowning, or
the cutting of their throats? Not much to them, I take it; and no more
to us. If there's a distinction, it's so nice I can't see it.
_Carramba_! no!"

"Whether you see it or not," interposes Harry Blew, "there be much; and
for myself, as I've said, I object to spillin' blood, where the thing
an't absolute needcessary. True, by leavin them aboard an' tied, as Mr
Gomez suggests, they'll get drowned, for sartin; but it'll at least keep
our hands clear o' blood murder!"

"That's true!" cried several in assent. "Let's take the Australian way
of it, and tie them up!"

The assenting voices are nearly unanimous; and the eccentric compromise
is carried.

So far everything is fixed, and it but remains to arrange about the
action, and apportion to every one his part.

For this very few words suffice, the apportionment being, that the first
officer, assisted by Davis, who has some knowledge of ship-carpentry, is
to see to the scuttling of the vessel; Gomez and Hernandez to take
ch