“O, but stay, brother, stay. You shall be wealthy. In the orange grove down yonder, under the grave you dug, are more gold and precious stones than we could carry or even lift. I found the treasure; but I touch it not unless you consent to share it.”
“This, then,” said Tom laughing now, “is the secret of the grave we had thought desecrated. Come, then, we shall bury the skeletons elsewhere; and, if we are fortunate ever to get away from this lonely island, I will share your treasure.”
“Thank you, brother, thank you. How good the Great Spirit is to us at last!”
CHAPTER XX.
“O, BERNARD, IT IS YOUR FATHER’S SHIP!.”
AFTER the strange meeting with Bernard Herbert, his imprisonment on the lonely island no longer felt irksome to Tom Talisker.
Indeed, for a time at all events, he was in no hurry for “the ship” to come. Had it arrived the first week even, I daresay Tom would have been a little disappointed. O, it was bound to appear some day or other; all three prisoners felt sure of that. For they were young and healthy, and therefore they were happy and hopeful. Why should they not enjoy life as thoroughly as possible, therefore? They did so anyhow.
They hunted, they fished, they roamed through the woods and wild glens, and studied nature in its every phase and form, and in fact really felt part and parcel of the living joys and wonders all around them.
“It is very well being a Crusoe, for a short time all by yourself,” Tom said one day to Bernard; “but it is doubly delightful to have a companion.”
The very flowers seemed more beautiful now, the trees looked greener, and the sky and sea a deeper blue.
Strange to say, neither Tom nor Bernard thought twice of the buried treasure. It was there waiting them when they wanted it. Far more in gold alone than would purchase all the lands of Craigielea, and half the parish besides. They did not even trouble themselves to wonder how it had come there. A dying convict had told Bernard its whereabouts—a convict that he had befriended—and doubtless it had been concealed long years ago by the buccaneers who infested these seas in the good old times.