CHAPTER XVII
THE ARRIVAL
Turber took Nanette back to the aero. A dozen canoes had arrived now, the treasure was nearly all loaded aboard. The Indian legends here had told of it—these chests buried on the shore of the water, up the river a day's journey. How it got there no one can say. Left by some Mongol outlaw, perhaps—of that Eastern civilization which was here centuries before and which merged gradually into these savages the white man called Indians.
Turber had laid his plans. The renegade Dutchman—one Melyn from the Staten Island region—had been supplied with money by Turber. He had purchased trinkets—had bribed the Indians—organized and fitted out an expedition.
"And now we have it, little Nanette," said Turber. "You will love me for all this wealth and luxury and power that I will lavish upon you."
The aero was everywhere littered with the treasure. Piles of broken, moldy chests; scattered jewels strewn in heaps in the various cabins. Jewels fashioned in strange devices of beaten gold and silver; anklets of gold, garlanded with insets of rubies and emeralds; a heap of sapphires glowing like the tropic sea at night; gemmed bangles of a myriad designs; great metal vases, ornate with hydra-headed images—religious trappings of a heathen age, and fabulous Eastern riches.
The aero started almost as soon as Turber and Nanette came aboard. It flashed forward in Time; and flew slowly in Space. Not far in Space—south down the Hudson River, across the harbor until it poised over Staten Island.
Turber sat with Nanette in the control room. She heard Josefa's voice, but Turber ordered the woman away. Bluntnose was at the controls. How Josefa explained our escape Nanette never knew. Perhaps by blaming it upon the Indian—her word was as good as his. Turber with his treasure, and having recovered Nanette, was in too good a humor to bother with probing it.
Nanette knew that they were upon the last of the voyage now. Headed for the Great City of New York in the Time-world of 2445. Their permanent home.