“What could I do? Somehow it became known at once that I knew the facts. All the men who had been with me decamped overnight. It was useless to go to Nassau and the authorities. I had no proof and, besides, Timbado is far away. Later I did tell the facts to the governor. He was good enough to tell me if I would locate the property and establish proof of ownership, he would attempt to recover it. He even looked up the location of Timbado on the official chart and asked me to tea. I was grateful and thanked him.”
“Then you never even saw the pearl,” said Andy.
“But I tried to,” said the captain, shaking his head in the negative. “I judged it was worth while. So I took the trouble to sail all the way to Timbado and call on the king. I took six men with me—all colored, but not thieves—and we landed at daybreak. The place is worth going to see,” explained the speaker. “It isn’t much of an island. Including a coral reef that surrounds the key, it is about a mile across and almost circular. There is a circular beach of sand, but the main part of the island is a coral elevation with bluff-like sides—it resembles the hill on which Nassau is built.
“My men had no longing to go ashore, so I didn’t insist. There was no delegation to welcome us, but I beached the boat and walked over to a group of thatched huts at the base of the bluff. Several men, clad mainly in rough palmetto hats, watched my approach. One of them, fully clothed and weighing at least two hundred pounds, came forward. He spoke English, and was probably the secretary-of-war, as he carried a revolver in a belt.”
Andy edged forward again.
“I told him I wanted to see the king, and he replied by asking if I had tobacco or rum. When I told him I wasn’t a trader and repeated that I wanted to talk to Cajou, he pointed at once to my boat and touched his revolver. He was so unsociable that I took the trouble to look over my own, and then I passed on.
“The collection of huts was a combination cook camp and slaughter pen. Decaying conchs was the predominating odor. But it was varied with the smell of rotten shark meat, a half-consumed shark hanging from a post in the center of a filthy court. One glance told me that Cajou’s house was not here, for behind the odorous pens and the reeking cook pots, I had seen steps cut in the coral limestone bluff.
“These steps,” went on Captain Bassett, after he had supplemented his expired cigar with a pipe, “were partly concealed under vines and dwarfed palms. After most of those about the beach huts had disappeared toward the top of the elevation, I followed. When I saw this, it occurred to me at once that the summit would make a good cricket ground. Mainly, the place was solid, smooth limestone with some sand and sparse vegetation, and all sloping to the center, where there was a considerable pool or pond.”
“Weren’t you afraid?” broke in his auditor. But to this there was no reply.
“On the edge of the pool was a stockade, and in this a quadrangle of latania-roofed huts. On each side of an opening facing the water were two dead cocoa palms. From the top of each hung a mess of odds and ends: bones, shark heads, colored cloth, shells on long strings, that I knew meant royalty. I saw at once that the palace was at the lowest part of the basin—you couldn’t even see the tops of the dead palms from the sea.