Jewels, I thought: yes, jewels--jewels that might be recognized, jewels that Adam Mayle would keep hidden to himself so long as there was no pressing need to dispose of them.
"As it is," continued Glen, "we take all, but we give you your life. That's a fair offer."
"Yes, that's fair," said Roper.
I hazarded it.
"Very well," said I. "You can find your jewels for yourselves."
I expected an explosion of wrath; I met with only mute surprise.
"Jewels!" said Roper at length.
"Well, isn't the cross thick with them?" said Tortue to Roper.
"It wouldn't be of much use to us without," sniggered Glen. "Lord, but that was a clever stroke of Roberts'--the cleverest thing he ever done. Right under the guns of the African Comp'ny's fort she lay in Sierra Leone harbour--a Portuguese ship of twenty guns. At a quarter to eleven there was her crew, as many as might be--we could hear 'em singing and laughing as we pulled across the water to 'em--and at ten minutes past three there wasn't a mother's son of them all alive; and no noise, mind you. Rich she was, too. Sugar--we had run short of sugar for our punch, and welcome it was--sugar, skins, tobacco, ninety thousand moidors, and this cross with the diamonds for the King of Portugal. Roberts himself said he had never seen stones like it, and he was a good judge of stones was Roberts. He was quick, too. Why, we had that cross on the dinghy and were well up the Sierra Leone River before daybreak, just the three of us--Roberts, me, and Adam Mayle--Kennedy he called himself then, being a gentleman born and with more sense than the rest of us. He buried the cross, two days sail up the Sierra Leone River, and Roberts made a chart of its bearings. He gave it to me on the deck of the Royal Fortune when he was mortally wounded, and I kept it all the time we were in prison. I showed it to Adam Mayle when we escaped, but we had no means to get at it--at least, I hadn't. Adam, he was a gentleman born, and had got his savings placed all safe in his own name."
I hoped Glen would go on in this strain until my slip was forgotten. I was, besides, acquiring information. But Roper cut him short.