siness from the front. I don't take much stock in mercantile
Jack, you know that, but, poor devil, he's got to go where he's told;
and if you make trouble, ten to one it'll make you sick to see the
innocents who have to stand the racket. It would be different if we
understood the operation; but we don't, you see: there's a lot of queer
corners in life, and my vote is to let the blame' thing lie."

"You speak as if we had that in our power," I objected.

"And so we have," said he.

"What about the men?" I asked. "They know too much by half, and you
can't keep them from talking."

"Can't I?" returned Nares. "I bet a boarding-master can! They can be all
half-seas-over when they get ashore, blind drunk by dark, and cruising
out of the Golden Gate in different deep-sea ships by the next morning.
Can't keep them from talking, can't I? Well, I can make 'em talk
separate, leastways. If a whole crew came talking, parties would listen;
but if it's only one lone old shell-back, it's the usual yarn. And at
least, they needn't talk before six months, or--if we have luck, and
there's a whaler handy--three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it's
ancient history."

"That's what they call Shanghaiing, isn't it?" I asked. "I thought it
belonged to the dime novel."

"O, dime novels are right enough," returned the captain. "Nothing wrong
with the dime novel, only that things happen thicker than they do in
life, and the practical seamanship is off colour."

"So we can keep the business to ourselves," I mused.

"There's one other person that might blab," said the captain. "Though I
don't believe she has anything left to tell."

"And who is _she_?" I asked.

"The old girl there," he answered, pointing to the wreck; "I know
there's nothing in her; but somehow I'm afraid of some one else--it's
the last thing you'd expect, so it's just the first that'll happen--some
one dropping into this God-forgotten island where nobody drops in,
waltzing into that wreck that we've grown old with searching, stooping
straight down, and picking right up the very thing that tells the story.
What's that to me? you may ask, and why am I gone Soft Tommy on this
Museum of Crooks? They've smashed up you and Mr. Pinkerton; they've
turned my hair grey with conundrums they've been up to larks, no doubt;
and that's all I know of them--you say. Well, and that's just where it
is. I don't know enough; I don't know what's uppermost it's just such a
lot of miscella