I loved her for her words. But I shook my head again.
"It won't do, my dear," said I. "And you know it won't do. If I'd found that cursed treasure, things might have been different. But now I've only to tell you I shall never forget that you paid me the greatest compliment a woman can pay a man.... and to say good-bye...."
With a sob, she turned from me and, ignoring my arm, ran down the ladder and stepped into the boat.
Before morning Clubfoot had escaped. Loud shouts from Cock Island where, by Garth's permission, some of the crew of the Naomi had spent the night ashore, discovered the news to us. The Naomi's launch, which they had drawn up on the beach, was missing, and at the companion of the Cristobal a severed length of rope showed that the painter of one of the ship's boats which had been tied up there had been cut.
Bard held an inquiry. But his crew came from Rodriguez, "and," he told me, "they have a holy fear of El Cojo. He simply blustered his way out of the lamp-room where I had him imprisoned! I'm not sure," he added with a grin, "that old Clubfoot has not himself presented us with the simplest solution of a very difficult problem!"
CHAPTER XXVI
IN WHICH A BLACK BOX PLAYS A DECISIVE PART
A smear of smoke on the horizon was all that was left to denote the presence of the Naomi when John Bard came to me as I sat in the shade of the after-deck of the Cristobal, going through the mail he had brought me from Rodriguez. He dropped into a chair at my side.
"Captain Lawless and that Scots engineer of his," he said, "spent the greater part of the night ashore grubbing for gold round the image. But they didn't find as much as a dollar. And then to discover they had lost their launch. Gee! they were as sick as mud!"