"
"Why, what have I done that is wonderful?"
"You took the line, ma'am, that, from here to Honduras, what is it
but a passage? A few months at the most--oh, to be sure, to a seaman
that's no more than nature; but to hear it from any one land-bred,
and a lady too! As a Christian man, I have believed in miracles,
but to-day I seem to be moving among them. And after your saying
_that_, I had no call to be surprised when you up and suggested a way
that would have taken a seaman twenty years to hit upon! I am not
talking about the ship, ma'am. That part of your plan (if you'll
allow me, as a seaman, to give an opinion) won't work at all.
But the plan in general is a masterpiece."
"But I do not see," Plinny confessed, with a small puckering of the
brows, "that I have suggested anything that can be called a plan."
"Why, ma'am, you have been talking heavenliest common sense, and once
you've started us upon common sense there's no such thing as a
difficulty. 'Let us go to the island,' you said; and with that at a
stroke you get rid of the worst danger we have to fear, which is
suspicion. For who's to suspect such a company as this present, or
any part of it, of being after treasure? 'Let us make it a pleasure
trip,' said you, or words to that effect; and what follows but that
the whole journey is made cheap and simple? We book our passages in
the Kingston packet.
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