Missing pages 223 and 224.
Missing page.
Chapter Fifteen.
Mutterings of War.
The single, and scarcely original, exclamation of “Oh!” was all that Captain Drake appeared to be capable of uttering for the moment. His eyes continued to bulge from their sockets, and he looked like a suddenly-awakened somnambulist. He was trying to realise the meaning of what Frobisher had just told him, and was finding it altogether too much for him.
At last Frobisher said, with a laugh: “Well, skipper, the money’s here, sure enough; but so are we, and it remains to be seen whether or not we can get out.”
“We’ll get out all right, don’t you trouble,” returned Drake confidently; “but”—unable as yet to detach his mind from the subject of his suddenly-acquired fortune—“just now you mentioned the name of the gentleman who collected all this stuff—Jenkins Can, I think you said he was called. Who was he, and how did he come to pouch such a pile of loot? Was he one of those old buccaneers, like Morgan and Kidd, that we read about?”
“Well,” replied Frobisher, “he was not exactly a buccaneer, for he was not a sailor, but a landsman; and he operated in a much larger way than either Morgan or Kidd. As a matter of fact he was a Tartar chief in his young days, many centuries ago, who gradually drilled and armed his own tribe, then other tribes, and still others, until he came, in course of time, to have an enormous army under him. The idea then occurred to him to make use of this vast army; and he determined upon no less a task than that of conquering Asia. He did it, too; there’s hardly a square mile of this continent that has not echoed to the tread of his troops. Everywhere he went he was victorious. He took and sacked cities, destroyed them, and sowed the ruins with salt; and it is said that, to this day, no grass will grow where Genghiz Khan’s armies trod. Naturally, in the course of time, he accumulated a vast booty from the cities he captured, and it finally became too large and cumbersome for him to carry about with him, so he determined to alter his tactics for once, and, instead of destroying, to build a city for himself where he could bury his hoard, and which he could make his head-quarters.