"And nobody knows where it is?"
"Not a living soul. I should have had things all my own way."
"Well, Hank, you can rest easy. When you go home you can tell your mother that your father can't get the money, that you are the only one who knows where that stream is, and that I hope you will gather pearls enough to make you as rich as Captain Nellis was. You said that the money will have to remain in Bob's hands till he comes back. When do you expect him?"
"It may be months, for it takes a sailing vessel a long time to go anywhere, but he's coming," replied Hank, as if he felt that to-morrow would be the time when he could take Bob by the hand. "And I shouldn't be surprised if he had his father with him."
"That's just what I think," replied the lawyer, as Hank arose to his feet. "But I don't see how he is going to find his father aboard another vessel."
"Stranger things than that have happened in the world," replied Hank. "The Pacific Ocean is mighty big, and there's a heap of islands scattered around through it, but somehow I am certain that they are going to come back. Now, you just see what sort of a prophet I am."
"I hope your prediction will turn out true," muttered the lawyer as Hank closed the door and hastened down stairs. "But won't they raise things if they do come back? Joe Lufkin, it's my opinion that you will have to dig out."
Hank went away from Mr. Gibbons's office feeling very unlike his father, who went away from there but a short time before. It is true that he was at his rope's end. He would begin now, just where he was before he found that pearl to give into Bob's hands, but he didn't care for that. He had always made a living, and as long as he kept his health he trusted to be able to do so.
"Mother will have to go to work again, and that's what I am troubled about. But there is one thing, father isn't going to get the money," said Hank, as he trudged along. "I've got my nerve up, and I am going to wait and see what he will have to say to me when I get back."
But that was one thing he need not have troubled his head about. His father sat in his accustomed place, pipe a-going, but he was so deeply interested in other matters that he never moved out of the way when Hank entered the house. The question that occupied the whole of his mind was, How much did Mr. Gibbons know about him? Did he know he had knocked Bob down and sent him off to sea? He did not know where Cape Town was.