Bard heaved a deep sigh and looked at me.
"My word, old boy!" he exclaimed, "you've done it at last!"
"What—what do you suppose it's worth?" I asked rather unsteadily.
"A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand pounds," answered Bard. "Who can say? The antiquarian value, altogether apart from the intrinsic, of some of these things—that crucifix and that globe, for example must be very considerable.
"That emerald and those brilliants, for instance.... but you aren't listening."
I wasn't. A sudden vision had come to me of clear grey eyes trustfully raised to mine, of a tangle of copper-coloured hair that rested against my coat, of a slim warm body that clung confidingly to me. The discoloured leather trunk which lay at our feet was destined to change the whole course of my life. Hope, to which, with Marjorie, I had said good-bye, came surging back into my heart. Our island dream was not at an end.... unless good fortune had come to me too late.
"When will the Naomi reach Panama?" I suddenly asked.
"In about a week or ten days," John replied. "Why?"
"Because," I said, "I must reach her by cable!...."
It was ultimately from Rodriguez that my message was sent. Akawa, Bard's Japanese butler, took it down the hill to the cable office. I was prostrate with a bad bout of malaria, which I must have contracted in the steamy woods of Cock Island. My cable was to Marjorie, and this is what it said: