How I induced one of the big men of Jamaica to be banker and skipper
for us need not be told; but he is one of whom men have dark
sayings--chiefly, I take it, because he does bold, incomprehensible
things. That business paid him well, for when the rent of the ship
was met, and the few men on it paid--slaves they were chiefly--he
pocketed ten thousand pounds, while Biatt and I each pouched forty
thousand, and Michael two thousand. Aye, to be sure, Michael was in
it! He is in all I do, and is as good as men of ten times his birth
and history. Michael will be a rich man one day. In two years his
two thousand have grown to four, and he misses no chance.
But those days when Biatt and I went treasure-ship hunting were not
without their trials. If we had failed, then no more could this
land have been home or resting-place for us. We should only have
been sojourners with no name, in debt, in disgrace, a pair of
braggart adventurers, who had worked a master-man of the island for
a ship, and money and men, and had lost all except the ship! Though
to be sure, the money was not a big thing--a, few hundred pounds;
but the ship was no flea-bite.
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