In chapter 2, we learn a little about Septimius North and Barton Clegg; in chapter 3, the problem of Duncan's inheritance is revisited.  Then the action proper resumes ...

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Duncan spent all of the next day despising Clotilda Troll. He then spent part of the night loathing her. By the following morning he was in a position to contemplate Clotilda with pure hatred. On the third day of the voyage, Duncan passed with relative ease from hate to disdain, and on the fourth day, finally, he had sufficiently regained his presence of mind to think sanely.

If, instead of having fallen into the girl's trap, he had stayed in New Islip, what would have happened? In the last analysis, he had to admit, Clotilda had got him out of a jam and opened the door on an adventure for him in which he didn't stand to lose a thing.

So Duncan spent the fourth day of the voyage mostly thinking about the problem independent of Clotilda. After he devoted a good portion of his energy to forgetting the girl, he was able to become indifferent to her again. Close scrutiny of his circumstances in general had a calming effect on Duncan: the future presented itself in the form of a thoroughly engrossing riddle. The truth is, it's marvelous not to know one day what's going to happen the next.

The fifth day, having exhausted his supply of cigarettes and topics of rumination, Duncan recalled the existence of Clegg and Septimius. Those two unfortunates had subsisted drearily during the previous four days: they had limited themselves to staring at the ocean miserably, smoking cigarettes, and attempting hopeless, abortive conversations with the captain. Only toward the end of the fourth day had Septimius found a system to ward off boredom. Chance, more than anything else, helped him along. Septimius, during one of his halfhearted exchanges with the captain, had absent-mindedly taken some dice from his pocket and begun to fiddle with them as one fiddles with a watch fob or a key chain.

The captain gazed at the dice wistfully.

The captain had long ago found himself in dire straits. He loved to shoot crap but he couldn't: a captain can't shoot crap with his crew. Septimius, however, was not a member of the crew! Had Septimius, from that longing glance, guessed the secret tragedy of the captain? Say rather he instinctively felt it and, urged on by a mysterious force, offered the captain his dice.

This happened about four in the afternoon. At nine the next morning Duncan entered the parlor to find Septimius and the captain sitting at the table rolling dice. From time to time Septimius would groan. "Captain, it's time to go to bed, I'm sleepy."

During seventeen uninterrupted hours of crap, the captain had lost everything: every shilling he had in his pockets, then his salary for the next sixteen years, then his wardrobe, then his telescope, then his sextant, then the navigation charts. After that, finding himself absolutely destitute, he had begun to shoot for the yacht.

The Dolphin wasn't his but this didn't make much difference; he rolled for it anyway. He began with a coil of hemp, then a grappling hook, then a sail. They had gotten as far as the rudder, the compass, the shrouds, and the jib. Piece by piece, the captain had gambled and lost everything. As Duncan walked in, the captain was losing the last valve on the boiler.

"What's going on here?" asked Duncan jovially.

"We're just shooting crap to pass the time," Septimius explained, smiling.

The captain stared silently at the table for a moment. Then he slammed his fist down and shouted: "I'll take you on, Mr. Fitzmorris. Five pounds on the table against Mr. Fitzmorris!"

"But..." stammered Septimius, embarrassed.

"He has no choice," the captain interrupted. "He's my prisoner and I'll dispose of him as I choose."

Duncan frowned at the captain. "You would dare shoot crap against a man who has been put in your trust by your employer?"

"I'm sorry, sir," the huge seaman whimpered, "but you mustn't hold me responsible for anything I say now. I'm ruined. I've lost everything including this ship, which isn't mine. This--this Mr. North has rolled the dice thirty-six hundred times and hasn't lost once. Don't you see, Mr. Fitzmorris? Three thousand six hundred times Mr. North has shot and three thousand six hundred times in a row he's rolled boxcars. And the dice aren't loaded, I swear to you."

This was how Duncan found out about Septimius's most valuable asset.

As the captain wandered off mumbling to himself, Duncan looked closely at Septimius. "So you can shoot dice thirty-six hundred times in a row and have boxcars come up without fail?"

Septimius blushed. "Oh, my," he said sadly, "you're thinking what everybody else thinks. Even you believe I do something funny to the dice. All right, watch!"

The backs of their chairs were slatted. Septimius pulled out one of the slats and handed it to Duncan. "Do me a favor: carve two dice. Here's a penknife."

While Duncan whittled away at the slat, Septimius planted himself in a corner, face to the wall.

"I'm finished," said Duncan.

"Now take a pencil and mark them up like real dice," Septimius said, without turning around.

"Done."

Septimius drew near, scooped up the dice without looking, and threw them against the wall. They fell to the floor: six and six. Ten times he picked up the dice and dropped them on the floor or heaved them at the wall or up at the ceiling, each time with increasing annoyance. And ten times the dice turned up boxcars.

"See?" Septimius said finally. "I can't shoot anything but boxcars. Always boxcars, anywhere, with any dice!"

And, infuriated, he picked up the dice and threw them at the door.

At that instant the door was opened by a steward who was bringing up their breakfast on a tray. One of the dice bounced off the doorjamb, dropped and turned up six. The other disappeared. Septimius muttered something and then he and Duncan sat down at table. The hot chocolate smelled delicious and there was no point in letting it get cold.

"This unbelievable luck of yours," said Duncan, "must be quite . ."

He couldn't finish. Septimius, who was sipping his chocolate, let out a shriek and spat violently. Something clattered over in the corner: though it was dripping with chocolate, there was no doubt it was the other die.

It placidly displayed six.

Duncan smiled. "As I was saying," he began again, "this unbelievable luck of yours must certainly have earned thousands of pounds for you."

Septimius's face fell. "Well," he admitted, "I've won thousands, but it's a long sad story. I'll tell you all about it." There was no need, because just at that moment, after knocking discreetly, the captain came in. He was in his underclothes and carried several huge packages.

"Mr. North," he began, "I am a gentleman and honor my word. You won all my cash and I handed it over. You won my clothes. You won my books, my nautical charts, my instruments. So here everything is. My salary for the next sixteen years belongs to you now: here's an I.O.U. You collected the ship, every plank of it, and you are now its sole owner. But with all due respect, I must tell you that I can't possibly work for you. I'm firing myself and the crew. We will retire to the hold and await your orders."

"And the ship?" gabbled Septimius. "Who's going to run the ship?"

"You and your two companions."

"All right. I concede the ship," Septimius sighed. "Take back your job."

"Senseless," the captain observed. "How can I steer the ship without instruments and charts?"

"I'll return the instruments and charts."

"How can a captain have any dignity among his men, commanding them in his underwear?"

"I'll give up your wardrobe. Is that all?"

"How can a man have enough peace of mind to watch the currents carefully when he knows that for sixteen years to come he won't have a farthing! No, it won't do. You and your friends will have to go to work right now, because if you look over there you'll see we're running straight into a storm. I couldn't care less any more; but certainly you must.''

"I'll tear up your note for sixteen years' pay!" shouted Septimius, on the verge of tears.

The captain shrugged. "A man without a shilling in his pocket might as well be dead. No. What difference does it make to me if the ship sinks?"

Just then the ship listed violently and they heard the first thunderclap.

"All right, all right, here's your filthy cash!" Septimius yelled, scattering a wad of banknotes across the table. The captain leaped to gather them up and scurried out with all his bundles.

The ship was dancing wildly on the waves. Septimius went into a rage and, seeing the dice on the table, he grabbed them up and pitched them out the porthole.

Two seconds later a huge wave gushed through the porthole, drenching the entire parlor. Something rattled across the tabletop and bounced to the floor.

"Boxcars," said Duncan, snickering. Septimius snatched them up and threw them out again, slamming the porthole after them.

At that moment Barton Clegg appeared, very agitated. "We're a couple of miles off Bess Island. We'd better hope this storm doesn't blow up now!"

The captain burst in on them. "Gentlemen," the mammoth seaman bellowed, "there's not a second to lose. In this heavy sea I don't dare enter the island channels. In fact, if my bad luck keeps up, the chances are I'll run the ship aground on some offshore reefs. You'd better take a dinghy to land. Once you get ashore there's no problem. Miss Troll's villa is the only house on the island. Here are the keys. The provisions and your luggage are already stowed in the dinghy."

Duncan, Septimius, and Clegg found themselves in this dinghy a few seconds later being hurled from wave to wave.

"I didn't send any of the crew along, so you could stow more provisions!" the captain hallooed down from the bridge. "The dinghy will be nice for little excursions!" he added.

Duncan, Clegg, and Septimius reached for the oars and began to row as hard as they could while the waves rose higher and higher around them.

The landing on Bess Island occurred twenty minutes later, in this order: first the oars, then a suitcase, then a trunk, then Duncan and Clegg clinging to each other desperately, then the dinghy's rudder, and last, on two parallel waves, Septimius and the dinghy.

"It would seem," Duncan observed after he extracted his head from the sand, "that the captain's idea about not loading down the dinghy with crew and filling it up instead with provisions was brilliant. Thanks to his foresight, we now have at our disposal one tin of meat and the nearly intact wrapper from a can of biscuits."

Before he could communicate his thoughts on the subject, Clegg had to spit out a mouthful of sand. Eventually, however, he was able to put forth this agonized exclamation: "The keys to the villa!"

"We'll break in through a window," said Septimius, finally able to peel off his jacket and wring it out. "The point is, we're all alive and safe. And I . . ." He stopped and fixated with bulging eyes on something shining in the sand.

The two wooden dice: boxcars.

A wave playfully climbed up the beach, wrapped itself around the dinghy, and carted it off. "I think we'd better go find this villa," said Duncan wisely. "A warm fire wouldn't do us any harm."

It didn't involve a major search. Duncan and his companions trudged up a small cliff and found themselves before a perfectly flat expanse from which projected only two vertical objects: a palm tree and a boarded-up edifice. Duncan started off confidently toward the boarded-up edifice. That had to be Clotilda's villa.

The rain began bucketing down viciously. At any cost they had to get inside the house. Duncan, Clegg, and Septimius worked on all the windows on the ground floor. They pulled and pushed, even tried to pry the boards open with a crowbar which by coincidence they came across lying on the ground nearby. But the solid-oak shutters wouldn't budge an inch from their hinges.

Septimius was an extraordinary athlete: assisted by Duncan and Clegg, he scaled the wall to the second floor and began to fool around with the shutters. Same result. The rain meanwhile belted down more persistently and the wind whistled by menacingly. Streams of sea water, rain, and sweat. The three men looked at each other perplexed.

Duncan let out a sigh. "There's nothing for it but to try the door," he said.

The sight of the thick door, plated and studded with wrought iron, completely depressed them. Septimius, deflated, rested his forehead against the doorjamb and began to sob. The door creaked open.

"There," he exclaimed happily, "it wasn't any problem at all. All we had to do was push it open and walk in."

"However, it would have been more polite of you to have knocked first," came a sour voice from inside. Then a pistol appeared before them, and after that an even less benevolent-looking man. Even though by now it must be very clear that Clotilda Troll was a strange eccentric girl, there wasn't the remotest possibility of that man's being Clotilda Troll.

"Hands up," the man ordered.

Septimius's and Clegg's arms shot into the air without a word. But Duncan, with his usual calm, wanted to know something first. "The bullets in that gun--are they properly disinfected?"

"No!" shouted the man, nonplused. Then he growled, "If you want to try them out ..."

"I'll take your word for it," said Duncan as he raised his arms.