«I can trust you?» Easterling asked, and his eyes included the four of them.
«Ye're not obliged to. And it's odds ye'll waste your time in any case.»
It was not encouraging. Nevertheless, Easterling proceeded. It might be known to them that he had sailed with Morgan. He had been with Morgan in the great march across the Isthmus of Panama. Now it was notorious that when the spoil came to be divided after the sack of that Spanish city, it was found to be far below the reasonable expectations of the buccaneers. There were murmurs that Morgan had not dealt fairly with his men; that he had abstracted before the division a substantial portion of the treasure taken. Those murmurs, Easterling could tell them, were well–founded. There were pearls and jewels from San Felipe of fabulous value, which Morgan had secretly appropriated for himself. But as the rumours grew and reached his ears, he became afraid of a search that should convict him. And so, midway on the journey across the Isthmus, he one night buried the treasure he had filched.
«Only one man knew this,» said Captain Easterling to his attentive listeners — for the tale was of a quality that at all times commands attention. «The man who helped him in a labour he couldn't ha' done alone. I be that man.»
He paused a moment to let the impressive fact sink home, and then resumed.
The business he proposed was that the fugitives on the Cinco Llagas should join him in an expedition to Darien to recover the treasure, sharing equally in it with his own men and on the scale usual among the Brethren of the Coast.
«If I put the value of what Morgan buried at five hundred thousand pieces of eight, I am being modest.»
It was a sum to set his audience staring. Even Blood stared, but not quite with the expression of the others.
«Sure, now, it's very odd,» said he thoughtfully.
«What is odd, Mr. Blood?»