and the men behind it, and Captain Anthony assured him that if any trouble came he would exonerate him completely from the conspiracy and would proclaim that he shipped to go whaling. Then Mr. Smith sat silent for a few minutes.
The reply which came is not the polite language of the parlor, but it was very satisfactory to Captain Anthony, and was couched in language which could not have been made more expressive of Mr. Smith's purpose. He arose and took the captain by the hand.
"Captain Anthony," said he, "I'll stick by you in this ship if she goes to hell and burns off her jibboom."
This undoubtedly struck the captain at that moment as the quintessence of eloquence, and you may be sure the hand of Mr. Smith, which was placed in his, was shaken with a heartiness which told the story of his joy.
The two men talked long together. Smith had wondered at the interest of the strange men, Devoy and Reynolds, who had visited the ship during her fitting, and he never had been able to understand how it was expected the vessel could go to the River Platte and return in eighteen months; but otherwise his curiosity had never led him to suspect that he was not in the entire confidence of the captain. Captain Anthony was in a happier frame of mind when he went to his stateroom than he had experienced for many months.
