For a minute
we scrutinised one another. Then I said, "That's our risk. Trade is
forbidden. But this isn't trade.... This thing's got to be done."
His eyes glittered and he shook his head....
The brig stood in slowly through the twilight toward this strange
scorched and blistered stretch of beach, and the man at the wheel
strained his ears to listening the low-voiced angry argument that began
between myself and the captain, that was presently joined by Pollack. We
moored at last within a hundred yards of our goal, and all through our
dinner and far into the night we argued intermittently and fiercely with
the captain about our right to load just what we pleased. "I will haf
nothing to do with eet," he persisted. "I wash my hands." It seemed that
night as though we argued in vain. "If it is not trade," he said, "it
is prospecting and mining. That is worse. Any one who knows
anything--outside England--knows that is worse."
We argued and I lost my temper and swore at him. Pollack kept cooler and
chewed his pipe watchfully with that blue eye of his upon the captain's
gestures.
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