I could not believe my ears. Certainly, so far as I was concerned, the secret had been well kept.
Then a new thought came to me, "Does Captain Falk know?" I asked.
Roger Hamlin's words were to linger a long time in my ears, and so far as I then could see, there was little to say in reply. A hundred thousand dollars in gold had bought, soul and body, many a better man than Captain Falk. At that very moment Falk was watching us from the quarter-deck with an expression on his face that was partly an amused smile, partly a sneer. Weak and conceited though he was, he was master of that ship and crew in more ways than one.
But Roger had not finished. "Do you remember, Ben," he continued in a low voice, but otherwise unmindful of those about us, "that some half a dozen years ago, when Thomas Webster was sore put to it for enough money to square his debts and make a clean start, the brig Vesper, on which he had sent a venture, returned him a profit so unbelievably great that he was able to pay his creditors and buy from the Shattucks the old Eastern Empress, which he fitted out for the voyage to Sumatra that saved his fortunes?"
I remembered it vaguely--I had been only a small boy when it happened--and I listened with keenest interest. The Websters owned the Island Princess.
"Not a dozen people know all the story of that voyage. It's been a kind of family secret with the Websters. Perhaps they're ashamed to be so deeply indebted to a Chinese merchant. Well, it's a story I shouldn't tell under other conditions, but in the light of all that's come to pass, it's best you should hear the whole tale, Ben; and in some ways it's a fine tale, too. The Websters, as you probably know, had had bad luck, what with three wrecks and pirates in the West Indies. They were pretty much by the head in those days, and it was a dark outlook before them, when young Webster signed the Vesper's articles as first officer and went aboard, with all that the old man could scrape together for a venture, and with the future of his family hanging in the balance. At Whampoa young Webster went up to the Hong along with the others, and drove what bargains he could, and cleared a tidy little sum. But it was nowhere near enough to save the family. If only they could get the money to tide them over, they'd weather the gale. If not, they'd go on a lee shore. Certain men--you'd know their names, but such things are better forgotten--were waiting to attach the ships the Websters had on the ways, and if the ships were attached there would be nothing left for the Websters but stools in somebody's counting-house.