“Mon Dieu! Much more. That’s not the question. It was to be a surprise to you.”
“Pshaw! You can only have one minute of surprise, and you can have months of fun looking out for a thing. I don’t want surprises; I want what you’ve got—the thing that’s kept you good-tempered while we lie here like snails on the rocks.”
“Well, my cricket, if that’s the way you feel, here you are. It is a long story, but I will make it short. Once there was a pirate called Brigond, and he brought into a bay on the coast of Labrador a fortune in some kegs—gold, gold! He hid it in a cave, wrapping around it the dead bodies of two men. It is thought that one can never find it so. He hid it, and sailed away. He was captured, and sent to prison in France for twenty years. Then he come back with a crew and another ship, and sailed into the bay, but his ship went down within sight of the place. And so the end of him and all. But wait. There was one man, the mate on the first voyage. He had been put in prison also. He did not get away as soon as Brigond. When he was free, he come to the captain of a ship that I know, the Free-and-Easy, that sails to Havre, and told him the story, asking for passage to Quebec. The captain—Gobal—did not believe it, but said he would bring him over on the next voyage. Gobal come to me and told me all there was to tell. I said that it was a true story, for Pretty Pierre told me once he saw Brigond’s ship go down in the bay; but he would not say how, or why, or where. Pierre would not lie in a thing like that, and—”
“Why didn’t he get the gold himself?”
“What is money to him? He is as a gipsy. To him the money is cursed. He said so. Eh bien! some wise men are fools, one way or another. Well, I told Gobal I would give the man the Ninety-Nine for the cruise and search, and that we should divide the gold between us, if it was found, taking out first enough to make a dot for you and a fine handful for Bissonnette. But no, shake not your head like that. It shall be so. Away went Gobal four months ago, and I get a letter from him weeks past, just after Pentecost, to say he would be here some time in the first of July, with the man.
“Well, it is a great game. The man is a pirate, but it does not matter—he has paid for that. I thought you would be glad of a fine adventure like that, so I said to you, Come.”
“But, father—”
“If you do not like you can go on with Gobal in the Free-and-Easy, and you shall be landed at the Isle of Days. That’s all. We’re waiting here for Gobal. He promised to stop just outside this bay and land our man on us. Then, blood of my heart, away we go after the treasure!”
Joan’s eyes flashed. Adventure was in her as deep as life itself. She had been cradled in it, reared in it, lived with it, and here was no law-breaking. Whose money was it? No one’s: for who should say what ship it was, or what people were robbed by Brigond and those others? Gold—that was a better game than wine and brandy, and for once her father would be on a cruise which would not be, as it were, sailing in forbidden waters.
“When do you expect Gobal?” she asked eagerly. “He ought to have been here a week ago. Maybe he has had a bad voyage, or something.”