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hole.'
'O my, and the merchand' cried Huish; 'the man that made this shipment!
He'll get the news by the mail brigantine; and he'll think of course
we're making straight for Sydney.'
'Yes, he'll be a sick merchant,' said the captain. 'One thing: this
explains the Kanaka crew. If you're going to lose a ship, I would ask
no better myself than a Kanaka crew. But there's one thing it don't
explain; it don't explain why she came down Tahiti ways.'
'Wy, to lose her, you byby!' said Huish.
'A lot you know,' said the captain. 'Nobody wants to lose a schooner;
they want to lose her ON HER COURSE, you skeericks! You seem to think
underwriters haven't got enough sense to come in out of the rain.'
'Well,' said Herrick, 'I can tell you (I am afraid) why she came so
far to the eastward. I had it of Uncle Ned. It seems these two unhappy
devils, Wiseman and Wishart, were drunk on the champagne from the
beginning--and died drunk at the end.'
The captain looked on the table.
'They lay in their two bunks, or sat here in this damned house,' he
pursued, with rising agitation, 'filling their skins with the accursed
stuff, till sickness took them. As they sickened and the fever rose,
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