It was Kent-Williams who, when the last palm-tree had disappeared beneath the waters, first made speech. “So that’s done with,” he said. “I feel ten years older, but it’s done with, and we’ve got what we wanted.”
“Done with it is, thank my precious luck,” said Lossing. “I’m glad as a man can be; but I tell you I’m bubbling with surprise still that the thing should ever have come in my way. It’s a bigger puzzle than I shall ever make out in this life. Think of it! First a steamer—my steamer, that I draw out of a gamble, which is supposed to be sunk—gets up, and goes overland, and plants herself firmly in the middle of a solid forest, as though she wanted to grow there like a tree. We have it on the most reliable accounts that the crew deserted her out in the Mexican Gulf; but some unknown somebody comes up and paints a different color on one of her smoke-stacks, and leaves the other as it was, and screws new cast-brass name-plates on all her engines and fittings, and leaves the lifebuoys labeled ‘Port Edes of Liverpool.’ But then the gold in her flies two miles further up-country, and dives twenty feet under the ground, without disturbing the mangrove roots. And you will please to remember that that same network of wood cost us two days of hard cutting with an ax before we got through it. Now, if a man can ravel all that out, I swear he ought to be burnt for sorcery.”
“It was the fishiness of the whole thing that impressed me most,” said Kent-Williams, thoughtfully. “I think, dear boy, we’ve been very wise chaps in selling your blessed steamer with a brand-new set of names on her to a Spanish man who gave a low price and asked no questions. It was quite honest on our part, seeing that the steamer and her cargo were legally yours; but I shouldn’t be surprised if, by keeping dark, we’ve saved a lot of trouble for somebody else.”
“It’s very probable,” said Lossing. “But I wonder who? D’you know, old man, I’d give a couple of thousand, out of sheer curiosity, just to know how all this racket has been fixed up. It seems to me some way that Pat Onslow must have had a finger in it.”
“Do you think,” retorted Kent-Williams, “that if Patrick Onslow had his finger on half a million, which no one else knew about, it wouldn’t have been his half-million? No, sir. That cock won’t fight. Besides, Onslow was spooning the Kildare girl, and that took up all his time, I guess. Heigh-ho!” said Kent-Williams.
“What’s that for?”
“Which?”
“The sigh.”
“Did I sigh? Well, I was thinking about Mrs. Duvernay, the Kildare girl’s sister, that Onslow was spoons on himself one time. She’s a deuced nice-looking woman.”
“So you’ve said before.”