Here, the portly captain cunningly omitted any specific price he could sell for, only using vague quantifiers like "a lot" to describe it.
The portly captain also persuaded Major General Layton and Major Moritz from another angle:
On the Misfortune, there are more than thirty rowers. If we scuttle the Misfortune, what happens to these rowers? Where do we put them?
The Bandit Gull currently has about fifty people on board and is already overburdened. There really isn't any more room to accommodate over thirty rowers.
"To scuttle the Misfortune, it would be tantamount to killing this group of rowers; if we don't kill this group of rowers, then we can't scuttle the Bandit Gull." Through this chain of logic, the portly captain successfully tethered Major Moritz onto his chariot.
The ship couldn't be scuttled; to scuttle it, they would have to kill the portly captain first.
But, how to bring the Misfortune back to port became a new problem.
