"Can't I?" returned Nares. "I bet a boarding-master can! They can be all
half-seas-over, when they get ashore, blind drunk by dark, and cruising
out of the Golden Gate in different deep-sea ships by the next morning.
Can't keep them from talking, can't I? Well, I can make 'em talk
separate, leastways. If a whole crew came talking, parties would listen;
but if it's only one lone old shell-back, it's the usual yarn. And at
least, they needn't talk before six months, or--if we have luck, and
there's a whaler handy--three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it's
ancient history."

"That's what they call Shanghaiing, isn't it?" I asked. "I thought it
belonged to the dime novel."

"O, dime novels are right enough," returned the captain. "Nothing wrong
with the dime novel, only that things happen thicker than they do in
life, and the practical seamanship is off-colour."

"So we can keep the business to ourselves," I mused.

"There's one other person that might blab," said the captain. "Though I
don't believe she has anything left to tell."

"And who is SHE?" I asked.

"The old girl there," he answered, pointing to the wreck. "I know
there's nothing in her; but somehow I'm afraid of some one else--it's
the last thing you'd expect, so it's just the first that'll happen--some
one dropping into this God-forgotten island where nobody drops in,
waltzing into that wreck that we've grown old with searching, stooping