r his feet.

'Well, my lads,' he said, 'you've done me the great honour to elect
me to be your captain. I'm willing to act, or I shouldn't be here. If
you're fools enough to risk your lives and liberties for a thousand
ounces of gold a man, I'm fool enough to show you the way.'

'Hurrah!' said half-a-dozen of them, flinging up their hats. 'We're on,
Captain. Starlight for ever! You ride ahead and we'll back up.'

'That will do,' he says, holding up his hand as if to stop a lot of dogs
barking; 'but listen to me.' Here he spoke a few words in that other
voice of his that always sounded to me and Jim as if it was a different
man talking, or the devil in his likeness. 'Now mind this before we
go: you don't quite know me; you will by and by, perhaps. When I take
command of this gang, for this bit of work or any other, my word's
law--do you hear? And if any man disputes it or disobeys my orders,
by----, I'll shoot him like a dog.'

As he stood there looking down on the lot of 'em, as if he was their
king, with his eyes burning up at last with that slow fire that lay
at the bottom of 'em, and only showed out sometimes, I couldn't help
thinking of a pirate crew that I'd read of when I was a boy, and the way
the pirate captain ruled 'em.

Chapter 34

We were desperate fidgety and anxious till the day came. While we were
getting ready two or three things went wrong, of course. Jim got a
letter from Jeanie, all the way from Melbourne, where she'd gone. It
seems she'd got her money from the bank--Jim's share of the gold--all
right. She was a saving, careful little woman, and she told him she'd
enough to keep them both well for four or five years, anyhow. What she
wanted him to do was to promise that he'd never be mixed up in any more
dishonest work, and to come away down to her at once.

'It was the easiest thing in the world,' she said, 'to get away from
Melbourne to England or America. Ships were going every day, and glad
to take any man that was strong and willing to work his passage for
nothing; they'd pay him besides.'

She'd met one or two friends down there as would do anything to help her
and him. If he would only get down to Melbourne all would yet be well;
but she begged and prayed him, if he loved her, and for the sake of the
life she hoped to live with him yet, to come away from his companions
and take his own Jeanie's advice, and try and do nothing wrong for the
future.

If Jim had got his letter