This remarkable document also shed a light on the character and variety of some of Mr. Solomon's numerous business activities, and seemed to show that he was even wealthier than rumour had alleged. Until now, Calamity himself had never guessed that his partner possessed any ships, and certainly Singapore knew nothing of it.
"Inscrutable are the ways of Solomon," he murmured with a smile.
He would not have parted with the incriminating document for a fortune because it meant that, henceforward, Solomon would be in his power. In all his transactions with the wily ship-chandler, he had always been made to feel that it was the latter who held the whip-hand. He had been conscious of it when he left Singapore on this privateering expedition and had more than suspected that Solomon's motives for financing him had been only partly concerned with the making of a profit out of possible prizes. He felt even more sure of it now, but it only increased his sense of grim satisfaction. The tables had been turned, and it was he who held the whip-hand, for it was in his power not only to ruin his partner financially, but to have him sent to prison for what, in all probability, would be the term of his natural life.
While Calamity was gloating over these matters, and while Jasper Skelt was doing his best to incite the crew to mutiny, Mr. Dykes was ventilating a grievance to the chief engineer. What puzzled and irritated him, as it did nearly everyone else on the _Hawk_, was the Captain's seeming folly in letting the _Ann_, admittedly an enemy ship, get away. Even if she carried no cargo of any value, she could have been escorted into Singapore and claimed as a prize. The Admiralty award would surely have been generous, and well worth all the trouble.
This view he explained at some length to McPhulach, who was absorbing a fearful concoction of gin and rum. The engineer was not a very sympathetic listener at any time, but as both the second-mate and the second-engineer were on watch, there was no one else to whom Mr. Dykes could unburden himself with anything like freedom.
"I ain't saying but what he mayn't have his reasons, and very good ones," said the mate; "but, if he has, he ought to tell us. The crew are startin' to look nasty again, and who's to blame 'em? Three times already we've had a chance to rope in a prize and he's let every one breeze away. It gets by me, and that's a fact."