"Wait. There's no hurry. Come along, there's the bell: they're going to drop him."
He coolly motioned, and passed out from the cabin to the ship's side. Tarboe kept his tongue from blasphemy, and his hand from the captain's shoulder, for he knew only too well that Gobal held the game in his hands. They leaned over and saw two sailors with something on a plank.
"We therefore commit his body to the deep, in the knowledge of the Judgment Day—let her go!" grunted Gobal; and a long straight canvas bundle shot with a swishing sound beneath the water. "It was rough on him too," he continued. "He waited twenty years to have his chance again. Damn me, if I didn't feel as if I'd hit him in the eye, somehow, when he begged me to keep him alive long enough to have a look at the rhino. But it wasn't no use. He had to go, and I told him so.
"Then he did the fine thing: he give me the chart. But he made me swear on a book of the Mass that if we got the gold we'd send one-half his share to a woman in Paris, and the rest to his brother, a priest at Nancy. I'll keep my word—but yes! Eh, Tarboe?"
"You can keep your word for me! What, you think, Gobal, there is no honour in Black Tarboe, and you've known me ten years! Haven't I always kept my word like a clock?"
Gobal stretched out his hand. "Like the sun-sure. That's enough. We'll stand by my oath. You shall see the chart."
Going again inside the cabin, Gobal took out a map grimed with ceaseless fingering, and showed it to Tarboe, putting his finger on the spot where the treasure lay.
"The Bay of Belle Amour!" cried Tarboe, his eyes flashing. "Ah, I know it! That's where Gaspard the pilot lived. It's only forty leagues or so from here." His fingers ran here and there on the map. "Yes, yes," he continued, "it's so, but he hasn't placed the reef right. Ah, here is how Brigond's ship went down! There's a needle of rock in the bay. It isn't here."
Gobal handed the chart over. "I can't go with you, but I take your word;
I can say no more. If you cheat me I'll kill you; that's all."
"Let me give a bond," said Tarboe quickly. "If I saw much gold perhaps I couldn't trust myself, but there's someone to be trusted, who'll swear for me. If my daughter Joan give her word—"