Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/378

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN your share of this cargo, you can have about four bags of anthracite coal, weighing a little over one hundred pounds, which, at the rate of six dollars a ton, would bring you between thirty and forty cents. Will that satisfy you? Of course, this is only a rough guess at a division, but I want to see how it falls in with your ideas."

Shirley laughed. "I guess you're right, captain," said he. "It will be better for me to keep on thinking we are carrying coal. That won't bother my head."

"That's so," said Burke. "Your brain can't stand that sort of badger. I'd hate to go ashore with you at Marseilles with your pocket full and your skull empty. As for me, I can stand it first-rate. I have already built two houses on Cape Cod,—in my head, of course,—and I'll be hanged if I know which one I am going to live in and which one I am going to put my mother in." 364