Of course, we shall have to decide later on whether it will be best for us to try and seize a ship, all of us acting together, or for us to get quietly on board one and keep under hatches until she is well away.

That is the plan I fancy most." "So do I.In the first place the chances are that in the next two or three months at least half the fellows will be picked up.

To begin with, several of them are sure to get hold of liquor and make attacks upon the settlers, in which case some of them, anyhow, are sure to get killed.

In the next place, most of them were brought up as thieves in the slums of London, and will have no more idea of roughing it in a country like this than of behaving themselves if they were transported to a London drawing room.

Therefore, I am pretty sure that at the end of three months we shall not be able to reckon on half of them.