Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/264

252 and I tell you. If all the things you see in this place were put up in a London auction room for sale to-morrow, they’d fetch more than a million pounds—down on the nail! I swear they would! If you’ll take me with you to England to-night—me and my daughter here; this is my daughter, Susan. She’s her father’s only child.” The irony of it! My stars! A shudder went all over me as I thought of her being connected by ties of blood with such an object. “If you’ll give the pair of us ship-room, and all these things—they’re all my property, every pin’s worth, all offerings to the Great Joss—you and your crew shall have half of everything you see. That shall be in payment of our passage.”

Half!

My mouth watered. His appraisement of the value of the things I saw about me went to all intents and purposes unheeded. Divide his figures by twenty. Say their worth was £50,000. Half of that, even after I, and Luke, and Rudd, and the rest of them had had their pickings—and out of a venture of this sort pickings there would have to be—the remnant would still leave a handsome profit for the owners. I knew the kind of men with whom I had to deal. Only give them a sufficient profit, I need not fear being placed in their black books. However it might have come. And then there was half that collection of gems—I would have that too. And half the gold dust. Ye whales and little fishes! this might yet turn out the most profitable voyage I’d ever made.

Yet I easily perceived that there might be breakers ahead.

“You say that all these things are yours?”

“Every one—every speck of gold dust. All! all! I am the only Great Joss; they have been given to me.”