w!" He waved his hand. "Or are you going to slash right and left with
'em, for general revenge?"

"I haven't decided."

"It's a fair question I have asked. So far as you are concerned
in anything which may be in those papers--and that's mostly my own
reports--you will be squared and more, captain. You can have the
_Triton_ with a ten-years' contract as master, contract to be protected
by a bond, your pay two hundred and fifty dollars a month. Of course
that trade includes your reinstatement as a licensed master and the
dropping of all charges in the _Montana_ matter. There is no indictment,
and the witnesses will be taken care of, so that the matter will not
come up, providing you have enemies. This is man's talk, Mayo! You'll
have to admit it!"

"There's another thing which must be admitted, Fogg! I have been
disgraced, hounded, and persecuted. The men along this coast, the most
of them, will always believe I made a mistake. You know what that means
to a shipmaster!"

Mr. Fogg wiped the moisture off his cheeks with a purple handkerchief.

"You were put in devilish wrong. I admit it. I went too far. That's
why Marston is making me the goat now. I shall be dumped if this matter
isn't straightened out between us!"

"I was in this very room one day, Mr. Fogg, and saw how you dumped one
Burkett. You seemed to enjoy doing it. Why shouldn't I have a little
enjoyment of my own?"

"I had to dump him. He was a fool. He had bragged. I had to protect
interests as well as myself. But you haven't anything to consider, right
now, but your own profit."

"Is that so?" inquired Mayo, sardonically. "You seem to have me sized up
as one of these mild and forgiving angels."

"Now, look here, Mayo, don't let any fool notions stand in the way of
your making good. It isn't sense; it isn't business! You have something
we want and we're willing to come across for it."

"What other strings are hitched on?" asked the young man, feigning
intractability as his best resource in this puzzling affair.

"Well, of course you give up that fool job you're working on. Quit being
a junkman!"

"I'm not a junkman. We're going to float the Conomo."

"Mayo, talk sense! That job can't be done!"

"So you've been telling every outfitter and banking-man in this city,
Fogg! But now you are talking to a man who knows better. And let me say
something else to you. I'll do no business with the kind of a man you
have shown yourself to be."

"Don't be a