"No one's come here since, no one that I'd trust.... Then, too, what if I found the stuff? What good would it do me—now?" He spread out his delicately shaped hands in a deprecating gesture. "I should die in a month if I left here. Finest climate on earth, this is...." Suddenly he laughed—a low, reminiscent cackle of mirth.
"But that wasn't all that decided me. I'd got to the planking, Guayaquil oak it was, and I was steaming it on when a nail drew, and the plank caught me in the chest, knocked me six yards, and broke a rib. It's broken yet, I guess; there was no one to mend it. Well, that finished it. I wasn't meant to build that ship."
He stopped abruptly and stared down at his battered rawhide shoes.
The inference was obvious.
"Well, what about it?" I suggested.
He looked up at that.
"I've been thinking about it ever since you came here," he confessed. "I'll go with you; but mind this, you mustn't curse me if nothing comes of it. I don't promise anything. All I say is I think I know where the stuff is, if someone hasn't got it."
"I'll let you know to-morrow," said I, and left him sitting there.
Was the man senile? There was nothing to make one think so. Was he a liar? There was equally nothing to prove it. At least half his story was a matter of island history.
We of the dream ship held a board meeting on the subject of loot that evening. We discussed it from every angle, and came to the conclusion that with the present atrocity called a motor auxiliary and the weather conditions of the group, we might take three days over the business and we might take three months; that the chances of finding something were outweighed by the risk of losing the ship, and that we were in pursuit of something visionary, anyway, so we had better get on with it.