“I won’t take it,” declared Moit. “We made a fair and square bargain, to share alike, and I mean to live up to it.”
“But you need the money more than we do,” I protested, “for you’ve got to build a factory to manufacture your machines and also to make a home for Ilalah. She is a prize we don’t share in, but we’d like to contribute to her happiness, so I shall suggest to Ned and Uncle Naboth that you take a half of all the diamonds and we will divide the other half.”
“Agreed!” cried my uncle and Ned, both together, and although Duncan objected in a rather pig-headed way I declared that we had fully made up our minds and he had nothing to say about the matter.
Then we told out story, rather briefly at first, for it would take some time to give our friends all the details of our adventures. Uncle was very proud of the way Bryonia and Nux had behaved, and told them so in his outspoken fashion. The honest fellows could have desired no higher reward.
After this Ned told me of his trip. On reaching the ocean he had rigged a mast and sail on the long boat and before a brisk breeze had soon reached Manzanillo Bay and arrived at Colon harbor within a half day.
Colon is a primitive town built upon a low coral island, but being the Atlantic terminal of the great canal it possessed an office of the Central and South American Telegraph Company, so that Ned was able to send a cable message by way of Galveston to Mr. Harlan.
He got an answer the next day, saying that the Carmenia, one of the Company’s ships, was due at Cristobal in a few days, and further instructions as to the disposition of the wrecked cargo would be cabled me on her arrival. Cristobal was a port adjoining Colon, and I remembered to have heard that the Carmenia was soon to come home from the Pacific with a light cargo; so I judged it would be Mr. Harlan’s intention to have her take our structural steel on board and carry it on to San Pedro.
All we could do now was to wait, and instead of waiting in unhealthy Colon Ned wisely decided to return to the wreck and report to me.
They had begun to worry over us and to fear the Indians had murdered us, so it was a great relief to them when we came back safe and successful from our perilous adventure.
Uncle Naboth admired Ilalah more and more as he came to know her, and he told Duncan with great seriousness that she was worth more than all the diamonds in the world, to which absurd proposition the inventor gravely agreed. But indeed we were all fond of the charming girl and vied with one another to do her honor. Even stolid Ned Britton rowed across to the marshes in the afternoon and returned with a gorgeous bouquet of wild flowers to place in the Indian maid’s cabin—formerly his own cabin, but gladly resigned for her use.