"Huh!" he said; "that is what you might call the retort meaningless. Supposing there was a treasure, and supposing you should stumble across it: would it be yours?"
"Why not?"
"I didn't know. I was just asking for information. You wouldn't feel obliged to chop it up into eighteen separate pieces and pass it around—like a watermelon at a picnic?"
"Why should I?"
"Oh, just on general principles, I thought maybe; all for one and one for all, and that sort."
With the miraculous discovery of the day—and Madeleine's rights—fresh in mind, it seemed a moment in which to tread carefully.
"Finders are keepers, the world over, Billy," I said. "I am a poor man, and I should probably hog the treasure if I should find it."
"That's better," he returned. "We're all growing so desperately inhuman that a fellow can't tell where to draw the line any more. If I find the Spaniards' gold, you needn't expect me to whack up with you. I'm going to put my feet in the trough and keep 'em there. Come on, old doggie; let's go and hunt us a hole to burrow in. There's another day coming, or if there isn't, we shan't have anything more to worry about."
He got up to go back to the camp, whistling to the dog as he moved off. For the second time the bull pup braced himself, showing his teeth and growling a bit, and this time there was no disturbance in the lagoon to account for it. But Billy whistled again and the dog started to follow his master, looking back from time to time, as if he went reluctantly; and once more I wondered what he saw or heard or smelled.
As it fell out, the answer to this wondering query did not keep me waiting. Billy Grisdale's shadowy figure had barely disappeared in the down-shore distance when another and much more substantial one broke out of the jungle just behind me, and I got upon my feet to find Ingerson confronting me.