Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/294

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN "Why should we run the risk of going crazy by trying to get more? I will not!" And he replaced the ladder.

"What's the matter in there?" called Shirley, from outside. "Who're you talking to?"

The captain came out of the opening in the mound, pulled up the ladder and handed it to Shirley, and then he was about to replace the lid upon the mound. But what was the use of doing that, he thought. There would be no sense in closing it. He would leave it open.

"I was talking to myself," he said to Shirley, when he had descended. "It sounded crack-brained, I expect."

"Yes, it did," answered the other. "And I am glad these are the last bags we have to tie up and take out. I should not have wondered if the whole three of us had turned into lunatics. As for me, I have tried hard to stop thinking about the business, and I have found that the best thing I could do was to try and consider the stuff in these bags as coal—good, clean, anthracite coal. Whenever I carried a bag, I said to myself, 'Hurry up, now, with this bag of coal.' A ship-load of coal, you know, is not worth enough to turn a man's head."

"That was not a bad idea," said the captain. "But now the work is done, and we will soon get used to thinking of it without being excited about it. There is absolutely no reason why we should not be as happy and contented as if we had each made a couple of thousand dollars apiece on a good voyage."

"That's so," said Shirley, "and I'm going to try to think it." 280