When I told Shirley about the gold, he made a bounce pretty
nearly as big as the others, but this time I had him in a stout
arm-chair, and he did no damage. He had in his pocket one of the gold
bars he spoke of, and I had one of mine in my trunk, and when we put them
together they were as like as two peas. What I told him dazed him at
first, and he did not seem properly to understand what it all meant, but,
after a little, a fair view of it came to him, and for hours we talked
over the matter. Who the man was who had gone there after we left did not
matter, for he could never come hack again.
"'We decided that what we should do was to go and get that gold as soon
as possible, and Shirley agreed to go with me. He believed we could trust
Burke to join us, and, with my four black men,--who have really become
good sailors,--we would have a crew of seven men altogether, with which
we could work a fair-sized brig to Havre or some other French port.
Before he went away our business was settled. He agreed to go with me as
first mate, to do his best to help me get that gold to France, to
consider the whole treasure as mine, because I had discovered it,--I
explained the reason to him, as I did to you,--and to accept as regular
pay one hundred dollars a day, from then until we should land the cargo
in a European port, and then to leave it to me how much more I would give
him.
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