For once in his career, Don Miguel O’Donnell was a battered, defeated soldier of fortune. He had lost his schooner and was bound to accept whatever terms might be dictated, or face the unpleasant alternative of being marooned on Cocos Island. A prisoner in the cabin, he was stanching the blood from a cut on his cheek when Richard Cary came down from the deck and said:
“Here, let me fix that for you. My steward is coming aboard to help patch up your men. Sorry, but two or three of them are past mending. It was a dirty job you forced on me.”
“I wish I had left you alone, Captain Cary,” replied Don Miguel, without a trace of animosity. “I was the stupid one. It was in my mind that you might try to capture this vessel, but those machine guns made me feel easy. I lose and I must pay.”
Cary smiled. He could afford to. It was a waste of breath to denounce this veteran adventurer as a murderous blackguard who had brought disaster upon himself. He had behaved according to his own code which gave the spoils to the victor.
“Aye, you lose,” said Captain Cary. “You have until sundown to get your shore party and supplies aboard and make sail. If there is no breeze, I will tow you to sea.”
“And if I am not ready to sail by sundown, what then?”
“I shall sink your schooner. And I won’t feel at all backward about using the machine gun you made me a present of.”
“Machine guns are trumps,” said Don Miguel. “I am leaving Cocos Island before sundown. It will not be healthy to stay longer. To wait for another ship to take me off would be too much like Robinson Crusoe. Six months, a year? Quien sabe?”
“You are fed up with Cocos Island?” observed Cary. “I feel something like that myself, but I shall stick a while longer.”
“To find the treasure, my dear young man? Yes, I see you are in a hurry to go back to your camp and dig, just as soon as my schooner is on the ocean again.”