this was done, "I guess there's no sense in makin' two bites at
a cherry," observed the skipper. "We can't spare the time to fool
around watchin' those fellers; so have the longboat hauled alongside,
and let all hands except the cook and the cabin boy take their guns and
cutlasses and get down into her. We'll just meander across and take
that there _Kingfisher_ right away, so savin' a heap o' trouble in the
long run. And while we're doing that, `the Doctor' and the boy'll stay
here and keep an eye on the chaps down below."

So said, so done; we secured possession of the _Kingfisher_ without any
difficulty, for although her crew guessed our errand the moment that
they saw us coming, they could not very well help themselves, such
weapons as the Nantucket craft was provided with being stowed away and
locked up in Slocum's own cabin, where the crew could not get at them
except by breaking down the door. But apart from that, they had no
stomach for fighting in the absence of Slocum, and they surrendered
immediately upon being ordered to do so, although, it must be confessed,
with not too good a grace. Having thus secured possession of the
_Kingfisher_, the next thing that we did was to give her another fifty
fathoms of cable, so that she would ride easily and without being
watched in any weather that we were likely to have; after which her
crew, having previously been searched and deprived of everything that
could by any chance be utilised as a weapon, were ordered down into the
longboat, taken aboard the _Martha_, clapped in irons, and put down
below into the fore peak along with Slocum and the two men out of the
dory, one of our own men being detailed each day afterwards to mount
guard over them while the rest of us resumed operations ashore.

It cost us three weeks of strenuous work to complete the examination of,
and extract the pearls from the oysters that it had taken us a fortnight
to fish up from the bottom of the sea, and when we had finished even the
skipper confessed himself satisfied, so great had been our success.
Yet, although Brown was so far satisfied that he was content to leave
the remainder of the oysters to Slocum, he could not bring himself to
leave behind the empty shells from which we had extracted the pearls;
pearl shell, he informed us, was worth so many dollars--I forget how
many--per ton in New York, and it would pay him well to take in all that
we had--discarding an equal weight of ballast--