"Where?" he mouthed. "Aye, where? Ask on, man! Or seek it, if ye wish. Aye, go ashore. Lay off those ropes," he shouted to the men at the falls to which his gig was hitched. "There's a boat," he went on. "There's tools on the island. Ye can have food and rum. Go ashore if ye like, and stay—any o' ye! Search for the treasure till —— opens wide for ye. But as for the ship, she'll beat up for more, by thunder!"
He waited a moment, but no man accepted his challenge. Silver, indeed, stumped deliberately out of the crowd, with a far-away look in his eyes that were as bright and hard as a pair of polished buttons.
"That's well," said Flint. "The course is so'west by south, Bill. We're for the Dead Man's Chest. All sail, and a lookout in every top!"
CHAPTER XXII
"FETCH AFT THE RUM, DARBY MCGRAW!"
Murray had predicted that the looting of the Sanctissima Trinidad would send the frigates to sea from Santo Domingo, St. Pierre, the Havana and Kingston, and the adventures of the Walrus furnished ample confirmation of his words. Six days' sail to the southward we raised the tops'ls of a lofty stranger whom the lookouts identified as a King's ship.
Flint, summoned from his perpetual debauch in the main cabin, agreed with them and ordered the helm put over. The Walrus headed west, and the stranger followed her. She clung to us through the day and night, and in the morning our glasses revealed the ominous belt of gunports of a sixty-gun razee. But like all English second-rates, she was clumsy in the water; and Flint was a good seaman, if nothing else. He contrived to keep beyond cannonshot and during the second night shifted his course cleverly and gave our pursuer the slip.
Yet he dared not turn back immediately, and we held on northeast into the track of the Spanish flotas, passing four ships westbound in the three days we continued upon this course. On the fourth day Flint deemed himself safe from the razee, the Walrus went about and he resumed his solitary rum-swigging in the cabin, drinking bottle after bottle the day long, cursing and singing and shouting his bloody tales and chanteys to an invisible audience that sat or fought with him.
For us three prisoners the Walrus was a floating bedlam. Moira might not stir from her stateroom unless it be at night when Flint occasionally slept and the most of the crew were carousing in the fo'csle; but she never complained of the confinement that washed the color from her cheeks, and retained her buoyant spirits despite the hideous danger which shadowed her every hour.
Without Darby she would have been in even worse case. 'Twas he spied out the moments she could venture abroad and thrust himself dauntlessly betwixt her and any threats. He carried her such food as she would eat and often did the same for us, for Flint was become subject to seizures of ungovernable ferocity, in the grip of which he distrusted all aboard the ship saving Bill Bones and Darby, and was in terror of unseen presences that lurked about the cabin's corners and mowed at him from the stern windows.