But we were right well pleased with the progress things had made.
The dinner next day was a great success; the men we met professed themselves honoured at meeting savants from the dear old mother country, gladly gave us permission to excavate wherever and whenever we pleased; and not only that, but they made us promise to dine with them as often as we could spare the time.
“We want,” one of them said, “to make it just all one pleasant kind of a picnic for you, so that you may have reason to remember the cosy little island of Amelia.”
We were profuse in our thanks, and on the very next day we set to work in earnest.
It must be understood that not one of the three of us went by his real name. We were very cautious indeed. Even those I had hired the little yacht from knew us not, nor did any man on board know where we came from when we sailed from Glasgow. We were going on a pleasure cruise, that was all, and it was connected with the study of science. But we paid our few men well: they had plenty of tobacco, good food, and a fair allowance of grog. What cares Jack for anything else? As far, therefore, as our sailors went, we were safe. But we had to have labourers as well to assist in digging. Herein lay our chief danger.
As for the removal of the gold, although Reeves was as honest a man as ever I met, no thought that he was doing any harm in removing the doubloons, if we had the good fortune to find them, ever crossed his mind. The island had been British. It was taken from the British. The gold belonged by right to the Spaniards, moreover, and more particularly to that branch or family of them from which he was directly descended.
No; he should be but repossessing himself of what belonged to him.
Now, in order to make everything seem straight and real, after having engaged two sturdy labourers, we did commence excavating burial-mounds, and every evening we appeared on the beach, our labourers, two sturdy men and true, carrying boxes of Indian bones, implements of warfare and domesticity; so that it was soon bruited abroad that we were just a band of British scientists, which meant, to most, British madmen, making a collection of old bones that no wise man would pick up at his feet.
So things went on for over a week. And frequently, almost every night indeed, we dined at one or other of the charming houses or villas in the neighbourhood.
Very delightful evenings these were, and never shall I forget them. The deceit we were practising, however, rankled in my mind very much indeed, and often kept me awake at night till far into the short hours, as Burns would call them, beyond midnight,—