He did.
“Does that agree, Tew, with what they told you?”
At the name, Tew, Nicky started a little. In the early days of piracy, as his studies had told him, one of the most notorious of the old sea barons, Thomas Tew, had made piratical history; could this man be a descendant? Could he be filled with the same daring and ferocity?
“It agrees, cap’n,” responded Tew. Don Ortiga leaned back, tapping the arm of his chair nervously while he thought.
The chums sat in silence, their three pairs of arms folded in sign that they were still in secret communion and waiting. After a long silence during which he considered them shrewdly, the Spaniard spoke.
“I do not believe it! Do you, Tew?”
“Sounds ‘fishy’ to me,” answered the apelike fellow. “First of all, them three trees on that little key ain’t more’n fifty years old. And my folks, and Nelse’s folks, has lived about these waters for more time’n that and there ain’t been no treasure buried that I ever heard of—not in the last fifty years!”
“So! Again, Tew,” the Don ignored his young captives in the intentness of some point he was trying to make, “again, a tin can would have rusted away and crumbled, or sank into the soil. You know that most of those islets are not really built up from the coral foundation. They are mostly thickly matted vegetation, roots and so on, with a thin covering of soil; if you stamp hard on many of them you can shake them.”
“I know that,” agreed Tew. “Besides, from what these fellows claim, there was a funny light and something knocked on their boat—if you was to ask my opinion, cap’n, I’d say I think these lubbers is makin’ it up out o’ the whole cloth!”
“We are not!” defended Nicky sharply.