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

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“I understand.”

“The particulars I have here,” said he, slapping the book, “were in the manifest; but there was more than cocoa and wool and tin in that ship—very much more. The cases in the after-hold were full of silver—I had hoped for gold when I sang out to my men to seek an ax; but silver it proved to be, and the papers I examined in my cabin told me that those cases contained in all five hundred and fifty thousand milled Spanish dollars of the value, in our money, of four shillings and ninepence apiece, though I am willing to reduce that quotation and call the sum, in English money, ninety-eight thousand pounds.”

I opened my eyes wide. “Ha!” said I, “now I think you need tell me no more. This brig is going to fetch the money.”

“That is the object of the voyage.”

“Your men as yet don’t know where they are bound to?”

“Not as yet. I do not intend that they shall know for some time. I want to see what sort of men they are going to prove. They shipped on the understanding that I sailed under secret orders from the brig’s owner, and that those orders would not be revealed until we had crossed the equator.”