"You say it is called Pirates' Hope. Was that on account of Sir Francis Drake's battle with the Spanish galleon?"
"Oh, no; I imagine it got its name at a much later date; in the time of the bold buccaneers. There are two little bays, one on the north and another on the south. Either would be a good place in which to careen the little cockleshell ships of our ancestors and scrape their bottoms. Possibly Morgan or some of the others put in there for that purpose and thus gave the island its name."
"Did you find any relics when you were there?"
It didn't seem necessary to tell this open-minded young woman about the bones, so I turned her question aside.
"The last of the buccaneers was permanently hanged some time in the closing decade of the seventeenth century, if I remember rightly. You'd scarcely expect to find any traces of them or their works now."
"No; that's so," she conceded.
Into the pause that followed I thrust a query of my own.
"Where has Conetta been keeping herself all day?"
"She is with her aunt. It seems that Miss Gilmore isn't a very good sailor."