ral--smuggling opium; such damned fools--paying fifty thousand for a
'dead horse'!"

"No doubt it might damage you in a business sense," the captain agreed.
"And I'm pleased you take that view; for I've turned kind of soft upon
the job. There's been some crookedness about, no doubt of it; but, Law
bless you! if we dropped upon the troupe, all the premier artists would
slip right out with the boodle in their grip-sacks, and you'd only
collar a lot of old mutton-headed shell-backs that didn't know the back
of the business from the front. I don't take much stock in Mercantile
Jack, you know that; but, poor devil, he's got to go where he's told;
and if you make trouble, ten to one it'll make you sick to see the
innocents who have to stand the racket. It would be different if we
understood the operation; but we don't, you see: there's a lot of queer
corners in life; and my vote is to let the blame' thing lie."

"You speak as if we had that in our power," I objected.

"And so we have," said he.

"What about the men?" I asked. "They know too much by half; and you
can't keep them from talking."

"Can't I?" returned Nares. "I bet a boarding-master can! They can be all
half-seas-over, when they get ashore, blind drunk by dark, and cruising
out of the Golden Gate in different deep-sea ships by the next morning.
Can't keep them from talking, can't I? Well, I can make 'em talk
separate, leastways. If a whole crew came talking, parties would listen;
but if it's only one lone old shell-back, it's the usual yarn. And at
least, they needn't talk before six months, or--if we have luck, and
there's a whaler handy--three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it's
ancient history."

"That's what they call Shanghaiing, isn't it?" I asked. "I thought it
belonged to the dime novel."

"O, dime novels are right enough," returned the captain. "Nothing wrong
with the dime novel, only that things happen thicker than they do in
life, and the practical seamanship is off-colour."

"So we can keep the business to ourselves," I mused.

"There's one other person that might blab," said the captain. "Though I
don't believe she has anything left to tell."

"And who is SHE?" I asked.

"The old girl there," he answered, pointing to the wreck. "I know
there's nothing in her; but somehow I'm afraid of some one else--it's
the last thing you'd expect, so it's just the first that'll happen--some
one dropping into this God-forgotten island where nobody dr