ook here, Joe Martin, you've been on the growl for more'n a week now;
but I s'pose if I was to give you the chance to get back into the
skipper's favour by tellin' him somethin' he'd very much like to know,
you wouldn't be above doin' it, would you?'

"`I don't want no chance to get back into the skipper's favour,' I says.
`If you knows anything that he'd like to know, go and tell him
yourself,' says I.

"`Why, Joe,' he says, laughin', `you've regular got your knife into the
old man,'--beggin' your pardon, Cap'n Saint Leger, but them was his
words, sir."

"All right, Joe," I whispered, anxiously; "what happened next?"

"I says, `I haven't got my knife into him any more'n he's got his into
me, I suppose. But if a man does me a hinjury, I ain't goin' to rest
until I've got even with him.'

"Then says Bill, `Now, I wonder what you'd say if anybody was to offer
you a chance to get even with the skipper, and do a good thing for
yourself at the same time?'

"`You wouldn't have to wonder very long,' says I, `if so be as anybody
aboard this ship had such a chance to offer me. But them sort of
chances don't come to a man away out here in mid-ocean.'

"`Oh, don't they?' he says. `Well, I believes they do--sometimes. Just
you stop here a minute, Joe,' he says; `I'll be back in a brace of
shakes.'

"So off he goes, and presently I hears him talkin' to the cook in the
galley, very earnest. By-and-by he comes out again, and he says--

"`Joe,' says he, `do you know what the skipper's pokin' the ship away up
here into this outlandish part of the Pacific for?'

"`Well,' I says, `I've been told as he wants to get a cargo of
sandal-wood for the China market.'

"`Nothin' else?' says he.

"`He never told me as he was after anythin' else,' I says, lookin' very
knowin'.

"`No,' he says, `I don't suppose he ever did; but somebody else might,
mightn't they?'

"Says I, `What's the use of all this backin' and fillin'? I see you
knows somethin' as I thought nobody in the fo'c's'le knowed anything
about but myself. Now, if you've got anything to say about it, out with
it; and if you haven't, let's talk about somethin' else.'

"Says he, `Did you ever know anybody by the name of George Moore?'

"`Yes,' says I, `I did.' And I had it on the tip of my tongue to say,
`And a more worthless scamp I never wishes to meet with.' But I didn't,
because it come to me to remember, just in time, that if these here
chaps knowed anythin