elve hands for the cruise. There was no
reason on earth for this number except that these were the gang after
the treasure, and that he was playing with the lot of them, same as
with me.

"The upshot was that we said goodbye to my mother and sister, and
crossed over to Carbonear, where I made acquaintance with my crew.
The number of them raised no suspicion in the port, because it was
taken for granted the _Willing Mind_, an old salt ship, was bound for
St. Jago, where ten or a dozen hands are nothing unusual to work the
salt; and this was the argument he had used to make me carry so many.
Our pretence was we were all bound for St. Jago, and the crew seemed
to take this for understood. I didn't like their looks. Martin said
they were an ignorant lot, and chosen for that reason. All I had to
do was to run south, and he undertook to give them the slip at the
first point we touched.

"He had a wonderful command over them, considering that he was but
one plotter in a dozen; and for reasons of his own he kept them off
me and the map. On our way he proposed to me that I should teach him
a little navigation; helped me take the reckonings; and picked it up
as easy as a child learns its letters. But his keeping watch over me
and the map was what broke up the crew's patience. I was holding the
schooner straight down for the Gulf of Honduras, and, by my
reckoning, within a few hours of making a landfall, wondering all the
while that they took the courses I laid without grumbling--though by
this time our course was past all explaining--when the quarrel broke
out.

"I was standing by the wheel with a seaman, Dick Hayling by name, a
civil fellow, and more to my liking than the most of them, when we
heard a racket in the forecastle, and by-and-by Martin--he was too
fond, to my taste of going down into the forecastle and making free
with the men--comes up the hatchway, very serious, with half a dozen
behind him.

"'Melhuish,' says he, 'there's trouble below. The men will have it
that we are steering for treasure. I tell them that, if you are,
they are bound to know as soon as we sight it, and neither you nor
I--being two to twelve--can prevent their having the game in their
own hands. I have told them, over and above this,' he went on,
pitching his voice loud--but having his back towards them he winked
at me--'that by your reckoning we shall sight land in a few hours at
the farthest, and are willing to serve out a doubl