Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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“What do you think of the cargo of La Perfecta Casada?”

“La Perfecta Casada is the name of the ship in the cave?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“It is a very good cargo so far as it goes, but there is very little of it.”

“There is enough,” said he, with a gesture of his hand. “I should be very pleased to be able to pay the value of that cargo into my banking account.”

I made no remark, and he proceeded: “When I had taken a peep into the main hold I caused the after hatch under the roundhouse to be raised, and here I found a number of cases. They were stowed one on top of another, with pieces of timber betwixt them and the ship’s lining—an awkward looking job of stevedoring, but good enough, no doubt, to satisfy a Spanish sailor. I left my men above, and descended alone into this part of the hold, and stood looking for a short time around me, roughly calculating the number of these cases, the contents of which I could not be perfectly sure of, though one of two things I knew those contents must consist of. I called up through the hatch to the men to hunt about the ship and find me a chopper or saw, and presently one of them handed me down an ax. I put down the lantern, and letting fly at the first of the cases, with much trouble split open a part of the lid. I would not satisfy myself that all those cases were full until I had split the lids of five as tests or samples of the lot. Then finding that those five cases were full, I concluded that the rest were full. To make sure, however, I beat upon many of them, and the sound returned satisfied me that the cases were heavily full.”