“Sure,” said Buck, “I’d take her jumping, but well you know I’m under contract, and as for throwing the cargo in the harbour, barring what the Port Authorities would say, it’s not mine to throw.”
“Well,” says the old man, “take her along with you, cargo and all; you’ve got an after cabin you don’t use with two bunks in it, that will do for them. You two bunk here in the main cabin, don’t you? Well, there you are, and I’ll pay you a thousand dollars for the trip.”
“Not a cent,” says Buck. “I don’t eat my relations when they’re in trouble. If I take her she goes free—and, sure, how am I to refuse to take her seeing what you say?”
“That’s me brave boy,” says Pat, “the true son of me sister Mary, God rest her soul.”
Then when we’d done some more talk he goes off.
“Well,” I says to Buck, “here’s a nice cargo.”
I’ve told you Buck was married to a woman who had run away from him. He’d never bothered to get divorced from her, fearing if he got amongst lawyers, he’d be sure to be robbed, and feeling that, as he didn’t ever want to get married again, buying a divorce would be like a chap with no heart for music buying a concertina.
“Well,” I says, rubbing it into him, “here’s a nice cargo. I’m no marrying man, and you’re hitched, so what’s the good of her; a thousand dollars won’t pay us for freightage, and if there’s a scratch on her when we get back, there’ll be hell to pay with Pat. S’pose she dies on us?” I says.
“Consumption of victuals is all that’s wrong with her,” he says, and then he says no more, but goes on deck leaving me harpooned.
I’d taken in this consumption business as honest coin, and now, by Buck’s manner and words, I saw that Pat had been lying to us.
The skylight was open, and seeing Buck’s shadow across it, I called him down and, “For the love of God,” I says, “don’t tell me that the old man has been stuffing us. What’s his meaning?”
“It’s a family affair,” says Buck, “and I’d sooner leave it at that till we get to the end of it, but if you ask his meaning, why I’ll tell you straight that Pat has only one meaning in everything he does, and that’s robbery. He’s making to best me. I can’t see his game yet or what he is playing for, I can only say the stake’s big or he wouldn’t be pulling the girl into it.”