"Oh, I see," said Jack. "All right, sonny, you shall be healed, don't fear; and the other fellow too, but ask him about the boxes first!"
"Tea-money first!" said Michail. "Alexander says the little box is worth five roubles and the big one ten. At Narva, if I complained against the merciful gentleman for kicking me, he would be detained and fined. A gallon of vodka and twenty roubles is my price for being kicked by the honourable lord."
"Kicked how many times?" said Jack. "For that sum we shall certainly kick you round the island, my friend. The police at Narva will fine as much for one kick as for thirty. We shall take all our kicks, remember!"
Michail decided not to go to Narva, and to charge me for the original kicking only—the price of which was fixed at a vedro of vodka, to be brought back from Narva by Kuzmá, and one rouble.
As for the elder, we paid him for the tin boxes, for, after all, they were treasure-trove, and might prove to be very much more valuable to us than the price asked.
This little matter being satisfactorily settled, Alexander the elder deigned to inform us how he came by the property.
This, he said, was a very simple matter. He had had the things five years, keeping them because he felt sure someone would arrive one day to find them. Five years ago an old Englishman had come on the island, all alone, to seek rare flowers and plants, as he informed everyone through a pilot at the lighthouse, since departed, who spoke English.
The elder had watched the old man's botanical researches, and saw him collect a number of roots of "brusnika and other rubbish," and saw him also plant four posts in the wood, digging holes for each and putting them in and piling earth to keep them steady. Then he had dug a fifth hole, somewhere near, and buried these boxes in it, laughing and jabbering to himself, said the elder, like a madman. The rest was very simple. Old Clutterbuck sailed away in the English steamer that stopped to pick him up, and the elder quickly went and dug up the boxes, hoping to find cash, but discovering nothing more valuable than a letter he could not read. He had thought of destroying both this and "the picture of the devil," as he called old Clutterbuck's portrait, but had taken the wiser course of preserving both in case someone to whom they were not valueless should come to find them.
When Strong arrived and commenced his digging operations, the elder hoped that his opportunity had dawned; but Strong proved to be a madman with whom it was impossible to enter into negotiations.
The rest, of course, we knew.