tiffs I been playin' up to here! All I ask is, to let me in on
it with you, and I'll be glad to put you wise to the best tricks of
a sly old fox who ain't ever been caught yet without two holes to
his burrow. I won't ask no half, nor no quarter, either, though I
jest signed up for that amount with the old girl here. But give me
freedom, and a bunch o' live wires like you boys! I've near froze
into a plaster figure o' Virtue, what with talkin' like a
Sunday-school class, and sparkin' one old maid, and makin' out like
I wouldn't melt butter with the other. So H. H. will ship along of
you, mates, and we'll off to the China coast somewheres where the
spendin' is good and the police not too nosy, and try how far a
trunkful of doubloons will go!"

With a choky little gurgle in her throat Aunt Jane fell limply
against me. It was too much. All day long she had been tossed
back and forth like a shuttlecock by the battledore of emotion.
She had borne the shock of Mr. Tubbs's sordid greed for gold, his
disloyalty to the expedition, his coldness to herself; she had been
shaken by the tender stress of the reconciliation, had been
captured by pirates, and now suffered the supreme blow of this
final revelation of the treachery of Tubbs. To hear her romance
described as the sparking of an old maid--and by the sparker! From
Miss Higglesby-Browne had come a snort of fury, but she said
nothing, having apparently no confidence in the effect of oratory
on pirates. She did not even exhort Aunt Jane, but left it to me
to sustain my drooping aunt as best I could.

As Mr. Tubbs made his whole-hearted and magnanimous proposal
Captain Tony opened his small black eyes and contemplated him with
attention. At the conclusion he appeared to meditate. Then he
glanced round upon his fellows.

"What say, boys? Shall we ship old Washtubs on the schooner and
let him have his fling along with us? Eh?" And as Captain Tony
uttered these words the lid of his left eye eclipsed for an instant
that intelligent optic.

From the pirates came a scattering volley of assents. "All
right--hooray for old Washtubs--sure, close the deal."

"All right, Washtubs, the boys are willing. So I guess, though
this island is the very lid of the hot place, and when I come again
it's going to be with an iceberg in tow to keep the air cooled off,
I guess we better be moving toward that chest of doubloons."

It was arranged that Slinker and a cross-eyed man na