Out of the Gulf of San Miguel we pushed past Brava Point as fast as Stubbs could send the Argos. The lights of Panama called to us. They stood for law and civilization and the blessed dominance of the old stars and stripes.
We were in a hurry to get back to the broad piazzas of its hotels, where women at their ease did fancy work and played bridge while laughing children romped without fear.
Adventure is all very well, but I have discovered that one can get a surfeit of it.
Before the division of the treasure there arose a point of morality that, oddly enough, had not been considered before. It was born of my legal conscience and for a few minutes was disturbing.
Tom and I were in Blythe's cabin with him discussing an equitable division of the spoils. Into my mind popped the consideration that we were not the owners of it all but certain remote parties in Peru.
After having fought for it and won it the treasure was not ours. The thing hit me like a blow in the face. I spoke my thought aloud. Sam looked blankly at me.
Yeager laughed grimly. There was a good deal of the primitive man still in the Arizonian.
"If they want it let them come and take it. I reckon finding is keeping."
But I knew the matter could not be settled so easily as that. A moral question had arisen and it had to be faced. Evelyn was called into counsel.
She had an instant solution of the difficulty.