“Yep.”
“Well, you can judge what the chances are. You hop back lively as a flea and tell Cark what I’m sayin’. Gold coin and right into my fist this mornin’, or I’ll give the show away. It’s his own doin’. If he’d played straight with me, I’d have trusted him. Seein’ he’s played crooked, he’ll have to pay. One thousand dollars, or I go back to Havana and you’ll have a t’pedoboat on top of you, to say nothin’ of Cleary!”
“I’ll tell him,” said Sellers. “Come over to the reef soon as you’re ready and I’ll give you word of what he says. I reckon it’ll be all right. One thousand dollars?”
“Gold coin, and tell him it’ll be double after eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, he won’t kick,” said Sellers.
The boat shoved away.
Ratcliffe remembered what Satan had said about the chart and the hidden writing in it and the high probability that the bones of the Nombre de Dios were lying elsewhere than here. More than ever did it seem to him that Satan was the spider of this web,—not a malignant spider, for the flies he was catching in the form of Carquinez and Sellers, and possibly Cleary, were the weavers of the web, in which they seemed tangling themselves. Satan only fell in with circumstance and took toll.
“Look here!” said he. “Suppose Carquinez pays you a thousand dollars’ advance, and suppose you don’t find any treasure, will you pay him back?”
“Why should I pay him back?” asked Satan. “I’ve given him the location, and that’s worth a thousand anyway.”
“But you said there was nothing on the chart, that it was a fake.”