e, heavy and hard.

"Now, boss!" he cried, not unkindly, "is this to be run shipshape? or is
it a Dutch grab-racket?"

And he proceeded to untie and run over the contents of the papers, with
a serious face and what seemed an ostentation of delay. Me and my
impatience it would appear he had forgotten; for when he was quite done,
he sat a while thinking, whistled a bar or two, refolded the papers,
tied them up again; and then, and not before, deliberately raised the
tray.

I saw a cigar-box, tied with a piece of fishing-line, and four fat
canvas bags. Nares whipped out his knife, cut the line, and opened the
box. It was about half-full of sovereigns.

"And the bags?" I whispered.

The captain ripped them open one by one, and a flood of mixed silver
coin burst forth and rattled in the rusty bottom of the box. Without a
word, he set to work to count the gold.

"What is this?" I asked.

"It's the ship's money," he returned, doggedly continuing his work.

"The ship's money?" I repeated. "That's the money Trent tramped and
traded with? And there's his cheque-book to draw upon his owners? And
he has left it?"

"I guess he has," said Nares austerely, jotting down a note of the gold;
and I was abashed into silence till his task should be completed.

It came, I think, to three hundred and seventy-eight pounds sterling;
some nineteen pounds of it in silver: all of which we turned again into
the chest.

"And what do you think of that?" I asked.

"Mr. Dodd," he replied, "you see something of the rumness of this job,
but not the whole. The specie bothers you, but what gets me is the
papers. Are you aware that the master of a ship has charge of all the
cash in hand, pays the men advances, receives freight and passage-money,
and runs up bills in every port? All this he does as the owner's
confidential agent, and his integrity is proved by his receipted bills.
I tell you, the captain of a ship is more likely to forget his pants
than these bills which guarantee his character. I've known men drown to
save them--bad men, too; but this is the shipmaster's honour. And here
this Captain Trent--not hurried, not threatened with anything but a free
passage in a British man-of-war--has left them all behind. I don't want
to express myself too strongly, because the facts appear against me, but
the thing is impossible."

Dinner came to us not long after, and we ate it on deck, in a grim
silence, each privately racking his brain for s