"Why do you give me such nasty little digs?" she asked. "You need not have stopped smoking just because I stood close to you."
"Really, Miss Deane—"
"There, don't protest. I like the smell of that tobacco. I thought sailors invariably smoked rank, black stuff which they call thick twist."
"I am a beginner, as a sailor. After a few more years before the mast I may hope to reach perfection."
Their eyes exchanged a quaintly pleasant challenge. Thus the man—"She is determined to learn something of my past, but she will not succeed."
And the woman—"The wretch! He is close as an oyster. But I will make him open his mouth, see if I don't."
She reverted to the piece of tin. "It looks quite mysterious, like the things you read of in stories of pirates and buried treasure."
"Yes," he admitted. "It is unquestionably a plan, a guidance, given to a person not previously acquainted with the island but cognizant of some fact connected with it. Unfortunately none of the buccaneers I can bring to mind frequented these seas. The poor beggar who left it here must have had some other motive than searching for a cache."
"Did he dig the cave and the well, I wonder?"
"Probably the former, but not the well. No man could do it unaided."