I proposed going back to camp for more matches, but Bonteck said no, that it was hardly worth while and, pointing to a hazy gray mist bank in the east which was slowly rising to blot out the stars in that quarter of the heavens, he added: "That cloud means weather; most likely the kind that would put the fire out if we should make one. If you're not too chilly, sit down and put your back to a tree. There's a thing that needs to be hammered out between us, Dick, before we get any farther along."
I found a place where the sand was dry and warm, and sat down, and he squatted beside me. I wanted to smoke, and was absent-minded enough to fill my pipe with damp tobacco before I remembered that there were no matches. As to the chilliness, even the wet clothes merely gave the effect of a steam bath. Within the half-hour the night had grown oppressively hot and the dead air was like that of an oven.
"Go ahead with your hammering," I said, adding: "There are several little matters that need explaining—from my point of view."
"It's coming to you—and to the others," he returned promptly. "I've been standing it off from day to day, hoping that the explanations might be made after the fact, instead of in the thick of it. But I've about reached the end of my rope. Mrs. Van Tromp told me after dinner this evening that she could serve possibly half a dozen more meals for the eighteen of us."
"Six meals; two days. We should have gone on reduced rations long ago. We've been wasting like drunken sailors."
"I know it. But I kept putting that off, too. Hoping against hope, I guess you'd call it. You know what a scare it would have thrown into everybody if the food scarcity had been made public."
"Quite so. But the scare will have to come now, and the suddenness of it won't make it any lighter."
"That is one of the things that is grinding me, but only one. I've been carrying a pretty heavy back-load, Dick, and the time has come when I've got to shift some of it—if I'm to keep from going the way Ingerson did a little while ago. But first, a word about that treasure find we made a few hours back; you'll stand by me in that, won't you?"
"In the matter of convincing Madeleine of the justice of taking the treasure for her own? Certainly."
"Thanks. I thought I could count upon your help there. It is a godsend to her, Dick. Don't you see that it is?"