"You mean?—" I suggested.
"I mean that if she had money of her own she might buy her freedom. I imagine it is purely a financial matter with Mr. Holly Barclay. If she could only find some of the Spaniards' gold—find it for herself so that it would belong to her. . . . Wouldn't that be splendid!"
This was something entirely new to me, and I said: "What gold is this you are talking about?"
She looked around at me with wide-open eyes.
"Why—haven't you heard?" Then: "Oh, I remember; Bonteck was telling us the story last evening, while you and the professor were out at the other signal fire." And thereupon she repeated the old tale of the siege and wreck of the Spanish galleon in Queen Elizabeth's reign, with the tradition of the hidden treasure whose hiding place the survivors had refused to betray—paying for their refusal with their lives.
"Of course, that is only a sea yarn—one of the many that are told about those old days and the doings in them," was my comment. "You knew that while you were listening to it, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes; I supposed it wasn't true. I kept telling myself that Bonteck was only trying to start some new interest that would keep us from going stark mad over this wretched imprisonment, and the watching and waiting that never amounts to anything. It's serving a purpose, too. Most of the young ones are turning treasure hunters—going in couples. Jerry Dupuyster was trying to persuade Beatrice to slip away just as we left the camp. I heard him."
That small reference to Jerry and his disloyalty—which was becoming daily more and more apparent, and which I may have omitted to mention—moved me as one of the Yellowstone Park geysers is said to be moved by the dropping into it of a bar of soap.
"One of these fine days I'm going to beat Jerry Dupuyster until his best friend wouldn't recognize him," I said savagely.
Conetta laughed; the silvery little laugh that I was once besotted enough to believe that she kept especially for me.