"And what do you propose to do about it?"
"Well, it's some time since I got any good of proposing anything much." I saw the lean muscles tighten along the jaw. "But I'm not dead yet." He glanced at his watch. "It's now eleven o'clock. I can get a horse up to midnight at the hotel. Before dawn I propose to take my morning plunge off the rocks, not far from the village of Machico."
"Alone?" I demanded.
He looked at me oddly.
"Suppose you answer that yourself."
I sprang to meet his grip across the table, and thereby almost lost the use of my fingers.
"Come," he said as he rose, with his compelling smile on me; "you're about the best coincidence I've met yet."
It was still raining when we climbed into a curtained bullock sled, one of those public conveyances that snatch the visitor over the pebbled streets of Funchal at a slithering speed of two miles an hour. The carro is hardly a joyous vehicle at the best of times. We sat in close darkness, oppressed by an atmosphere of wet straw and leather, listening to the mimic thunder on the roof, the gibbering of the yoke pin and the wail of the driver, a goading fiend in outer space. Possibly these melancholy matters heightened the dour mood of my new friend, who stayed silent. To me they were nothing, for I hugged myself in a selfish content.
Gold! It was all gold—real gold of romance; sunken treasure; mystery; legend; and a most amazing and veridical trick of Fate that had cast back five centuries—no less!
I sought to conjure up that other Robert Matcham from the lost past; that "lover of a too beautiful woman," who ran across the sea with his heart's desire in the old wild way. A bold and gallant figure, I was pleased to fancy; an adventuring squire or swaggering free companion in those red, rude times; a traveler by the sword; perhaps a follower of the Black Prince to the Spanish Wars, wherein he might have made such stout allies as the "pilot captain" who served him for his flight.