I could guess how grieved and shocked Laura was by the tone of her answer. She told her sister how the valet had tricked us with his voice, how he had been sent forward into the forecastle to work as a sailor, and how the men had punished him on discovering that it was he who terrified them. Several times Lady Monson broke into a short laugh, of a music so rich and glad that one might easily have imagined such notes could proceed only from a very angel of a woman. I did not doubt that she sang most ravishingly, and as her laughter fell upon my ear in the great shadow of that galleon, with the narrow breadth of star-clad sky twinkling with blue and green and white-faced orbs, there arose before me the vision of her ladyship seated at the piano with the gallant Colonel Hope-Kennedy turning the pages of the music for her, and sweet, true, unsuspicious little Laura listening well pleased, and my poor half-witted cousin maybe up in the nursery playing with his baby.
However, as I have said, this was but a short burst on Lady Monson’s part. Laura’s reference to the ‘Eliza Robbins’ silenced her; then Laura and I fell still, her hand in mine, and we listened to the men, who were talking of the galleon, and arguing over the state and contents of her hold.
‘Well, treasure ain’t perishable anyhow,’ said Cutbill.
‘That’s all right,’ answered Finn, whose deep sea voice I was glad to hear had regained something of its old heartiness. ‘Gold’s gold whether it’s wan or wan thousand years old. But what I says is, bar treasure, as ye calls it, which ’ee may or may not find—and I hope ye may, I’m sure—there ain’t nothen worth coming at in the inside of a wessel that was founded, quite likely as not, afore George the Fust was born.’
‘But take a cargo of wine,’ said Dowling. ‘I’ve been told that these here galleons was often chock ablock with wines and sperrits of fust-rate quality. The longer ’ee keep wine the more waluable it becomes.’
‘If there’s nought but wine,’ said Cutbill, ‘better put on a clean shirt, mate, and tarn in. There’ll be nothen in any cask under these here hatches that worn’t have become salt water after all them years. Dorn’t go and smile in your dreams to the notion that there’ll be anything fit to drink below.’
‘How long’s she going to take to drain out, I wonder?’ said Head.
‘I allow she’ll be empty by the time you’ve lifted the hatches,’ answered Finn; ‘that’ll be a job to test the beef in ’ee, lads.’
‘Well,’ cried Dowling, ‘there’ll be no leaving this here island, as far as I’m consarned, till the old hooker’s been overhauled. Skin me, capt’n, if there mayn’t be enough aboard to let a man up ashore as a gentleman for life, and here sits a sailor as wants what he can get. I’ve lost all my clothes and a matter of three pun fifteen on top of them. Blarst the sea, says I!’
‘Belay that,’ growled Cutbill; ‘recollect who’s a listening onto ye.’