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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: "Do they expect to go back to Spain till they have paid their debts?
Your Excellency, they owe me twenty reals apiece for their passage here;
they owe me two hundred reals. Are they to be allowed . . . ?"
"Silence, Mordecai, you fool!" shouted Ben Zoof, who was accustomed to call
the Jew by any Hebrew name that came uppermost to his memory. "Silence!"
Servadac was disposed to appease the old man's anxiety by promising to see
that justice was ultimately done; but, in a fever of frantic excitement,
he went on to implore that he might have the loan of a few sailors to carry
his ship to Algiers.
"I will pay you honestly; I will pay you _well_," he cried;
but his ingrained propensity for making a good bargain prompted
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