"On the face of it, it looks almost as thrilling as an old maids' tea party—and not any less conventional," Van Dyck began. "You have been around and about a good bit in the Caribbean, haven't you?"
"I suppose I might be able to pilot the Andromeda into most of the well-known harbors, if I had to," I boasted.
"Good. But you haven't been much out of the regular steamer lanes?—or have you?"
"Now and then; yes. Once, when I was trying to blow around from Carthagena to La Guaira in a coasting schooner, our old tub of a wind jammer was caught in a hurricane and piled up on a coral reef. We were Crusoes on the ghastly little island for nearly a month before a tramp steamer happened along and saw our signals."
Van Dyck nodded as one who is hearing what has been heard before.
"You wrote home about that adventure, as you may, or may not, remember, and the story got around to me. Afterward, I chanced to see in the shipping news the report of the captain of the tramp 'tanker' which had picked you up. Your island wasn't down on any of the charts, and Captain Svenson gave the latitude and longitude as a matter of information. Have you any idea what island it was—or is?"
"No. As you may imagine, I was only too glad to see the last of it when we were taken off."
"It is said to be the Lost Island of the old English plateship harriers—Sir Frankie Drake and the rest," Van Dyck went on. "There is a story that Drake once ran a Spanish treasure ship into the lagoon which encircles the island, shot it full of holes, and finally burned it after a siege lasting a couple of days. The tale adds that during the two-day fight the Spaniards had time to unload and bury some of the gold bars in the galleon's cargo. Drake tried to make his prisoners tell what they had done with the treasure—so the story goes—and when they proved obstinate he sailed away and left them to starve. At a somewhat later period the island appears in the legends as 'Pirates' Hope'—place where the black-flag rovers used to put in to refit. Nobody seems to know why it hasn't been put down on the modern charts."
I closed my eyes and a cold little chill ran up and down my back. Van Dyck's yarn was probably only a figment of the story-tellers, but it brought back most vividly the memory of that despairing month I had spoken of; the dragging hours and days, the pinch of starvation, the hope deferred as we stared our eyes out sweeping the meeting line of sea and sky that never—until that last welcome day—gave back a sign of the world out of which we had been blotted. Also, the story resurrected another memory, one which had been almost forgotten with the lapse of time. There had been relics on the island; a few bits of the iron and woodwork of an ancient wreck, and a few bleached bones—human bones. Still, I had all the incredulity of one who had listened to many marvelous tales of the sea.