“It’s all right,” he whispered.  “Don’t mind me.  How many have you bored?”

“All in this tier,” came the whispered answer.  “You will not inform on me to the . . . the others?”

“Inform?” Daughtry laughed softly.  “I don’t mind telling you that we’re playing the same game, though I don’t know why you should play it.  I’ve just finished boring all of the starboard row.  Now I tell you, sir, you skin out right now, quietly, while the goin’ is good.  Everybody’s aloft, and you won’t be noticed.  I’ll go ahead and finish this job . . . all but enough water to last us say a dozen days.”

“I should like to talk with you . . . to explain matters,” the Ancient Mariner whispered.

“Sure, sir, an’ I don’t mind sayin’, sir, that I’m just plain mad curious to hear.  I’ll join you down in the cabin, say in ten minutes, and we can have a real gam.  But anyway, whatever your game is, I’m with you.  Because it happens to be my game to get quick into port, and because, sir, I have a great liking and respect for you.  Now shoot along.  I’ll be with you inside ten minutes.”

“I like you, steward, very much,” the old man quavered.

“And I like you, sir—­and a damn sight more than them money-sharks aft.  But we’ll just postpone this.  You beat it out of here, while I finish scuppering the rest of the water.”

A quarter of an hour later, with the three money-sharks still at the mast-heads, Charles Stough Greenleaf was seated in the cabin and sipping a highball, and Dag Daughtry was standing across the table from him, drinking directly from a quart bottle of beer.

“Maybe you haven’t guessed it,” the Ancient Mariner said; “but this is my fourth voyage after this treasure.”

“You mean . . . ?” Daughtry asked.

“Just that.  There isn’t any treasure.  There never was one—­any more than the Lion’s Head, the longboat, or the bearings unnamable."’

Daughtry rumpled his grizzled thatch of hair in his perplexity, as he admitted: 

“Well, you got me, sir.  You sure got me to believin’ in that treasure.”

“And I acknowledge, steward, that I am pleased to hear it.  It shows that I have not lost my cunning when I can deceive a man like you.  It is easy to deceive men whose souls know only money.  But you are different.  You don’t live and breathe for money.  I’ve watched you with your dog.  I’ve watched you with your nigger boy.  I’ve watched you with your beer.  And just because your heart isn’t set on a great buried treasure of gold, you are harder to deceive.  Those whose hearts are set, are most astonishingly easy to fool.  They are of cheap kidney.  Offer them a proposition of one hundred dollars for one, and they are like hungry pike snapping at the bait.  Offer a thousand dollars for one, or ten thousand for one, and they become sheer lunatic.  I am an old man, a very old man.  I like to live until I die—­I mean, to live decently, comfortably, respectably.”