"How would I know when you do not know?" said the old man. "Could I see what you could not see?" And then "Listen."
Down the waterway came voices, and the sound of oars. It was in fact Jeconiah's boat entering the cave.
Fiona caught at the straw.
"He may have swum out to the other boat," she said.
But there was no one in the other boat but Jeconiah and his two men. They had powerful lanterns, and the boat was full of sacks. Jeconiah himself was purple with suppressed rage and impatience. The moment he could get ashore, he waddled up to Fiona and shook the map of the cave in her face, exclaiming, "Remember, if you have found anything it belongs to me and I claim it."
Fiona had only one thought in her mind at the moment, and the foolish impertinence of the little fat man was to her merely so much unnecessary sound. Her answer was "Have you seen the Urchin? We have lost him. Did he not swim out to your boat?" She was almost sobbing again.
"Confound the brat!" said Jeconiah roughly. "I've not come here to play hide-and-seek with a parcel of children. Tell me at once what you've found."
Fiona straightened herself, and looked at Jeconiah as though he were some noxious reptile.
"There was nothing here to find," she said. "And this cave belongs to my father. And anything in it he gave to the Urchin."
"Well, he's not here," said Jeconiah brutally, "and I am. Who finds, keeps."