both be mine. Before him lay no hope.
I felt a sense of shame at being an unexpected witness of his degradation. As I started to draw Evelyn back a guard prodded the Slav with his bayonet point. Bothwell whirled like a tiger and sprang for the throat of the fellow. They went down together. Other guards rushed to the rescue of their companion.
We waited to see no more.
It must have been a minute before either of us spoke.
"Bad as he is, I can't help being sorry for him. It's as if a splendid lion were being worried to death by a pack of coyotes," Evelyn said with a shudder.
"Yes, there's something big even in his villainy. But you may take one bit of comfort: He can't get free to interfere with us—and he deserves all he'll get."
"I know. My reason tells me that all will be well now, but I have a feeling as if the worst were not yet over."
I tried to joke her out of it.
"It hasn't begun. You're not married to Jack Sedgwick yet."
"No; but, dear, I can't get away from the thought that you are going into danger again," she went on seriously.
"Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink," I quoted lightly.
"I dare say I'm a goose," she admitted.
"You are. My opinion is that you're in as much danger as we shall be."
"Is that why you are leaving me here?" she flashed back.
I laughed. In truth I did not quite believe what I had said. For I could see no danger at all that lay in wait for her. But the events proved that I had erred only in not putting the case strongly enough. Before we returned to civilization she was to be in deadly peril.
Chapter XXI.
A Message From Bucks
In the forenoon we drew out from the harbor and followed the shore line toward the southwest, bound for that neck of the Isthmus which is known loosely as The Darien.
Before night had fallen we were rounding Brava Point into the Gulf of San Miguel, so named by Balboa because it was upon St. Michael's Day, 1513, that his eyes here first fell upon the blue waters of the Pacific.
We followed the north shore, along precipitous banks that grew higher the farther inland we went. The dense jungle came down to the water's edge and was unbroken by any sign of human habitation.
In the brilliant moonlight we passed the South and the North bays, pushing straight into the Darien Harbor by way of the Boco Chico. The tides here have a rise and fall of nearly twenty feet, but we found a little inlet close to a mangrove swamp that offered a good harborage for the night.
The warm sun was pouring over the hill when I reached the deck next morning. We were steaming slowly past the village of La Palma along a precipitous shore heavily timbered. One could not have asked a pleasanter trip than that to the head of the harbor, at which point the Rio Tuyra pours its waters into the bay. Between La Palma and the river mouth we did not see a sign of human life.
At the distance of a rifle shot from the head of the harbor we rounded a point and saw before us a long tongue of sand running into the water.
Blythe and I spoke almost together:
"Doubloon Spit."
There could be no mistake about it. We had reached the place where Bully Evans and Nat Quinn had buried the gold ingots they had sold their souls to get. We came to anchor a couple of hundred yards from the end of the sand spit.
Neither Blythe nor I had said a word to any of the crew to indicate that we were near our journey's end, but all morning there had been an unusual excitement aboard. Now we could almost see the word run from man to man that the spot where the treasure was buried lay before us.
"You'll command the shore party to-day, Jack," Blythe announced.
"Do I draw shore duty?" Yeager asked eagerly.
"You do. I'll stay with the ship. Jack, you'll have with you, too, Alderson, Smith, Gallagher, and one of the stokers."
"Also James A. Garfield Welch," I added.
"Also Jimmie," he nodded.
We had no reason to expect any trouble, but we went ashore armed, with the exception of Gallagher and Barbados, as we called our white-toothed, black-faced fireman.
I had our boat beached at the neck of the peninsula. While the men were drawing it up on the sand beyond reach of the tide I called to Jimmie.
"Yes, Mr. Sedgwick."
"Take off your coat."
"Are youse going to give me that licking now?" he asked, eyes big with surprise.
"How often have I told you not to ask questions? Shuck the coat."
He twisted out of it like an eel. I took it from him, turned it inside out, and opened my pocket knife. Carefully I ripped the lining at the seams. From a kind of pocket I drew an envelope. Out of the envelope I took the map that had been so closely connected with the history of Doubloon Spit.
When I say the men were surprised, I do them less than justice. One could have knocked their eyes off with a stick.
"Crikey! I didn't know that was there," Jimmie cried.
It had been Evelyn's idea to sew the map in Jimmie's coat, since that was the last place the mutineers would think of looking for it. While he had been peacefully sleeping Miss Wallace had done so neat a piece of tailoring that Jimmie did not suspect the garment had been tampered with.
We had, however, taken the precaution to take a copy of the map. During all the desperate fighting it had been lying in a shell snugly fitted into one of the chambers of a revolver in Yeager's room.
"Beg pardon, sir. Did the boy have the map with him while he was Mr. Bothwell's prisoner?" asked Gallagher.
"He did; but he didn't know it."
"Glad he didn't, sir, because if he had that devil would have got it out of him."
"Which no doubt would have distressed you greatly," I answered dryly.
"I'm on the honest side now, sir," the sailor said quietly.
"Let's hope you stay there."
"I intend to, sir," he said, flushing at my words.
The chart that Tom and I looked at was a contour map of the spit and the territory adjacent to it. No doubt it had in the old days been roughly accurate, but now the tongue of sand was wider than it had been by nearly a hundred years of sand deposits washed up by the tide.
Both on the map and the spit a salient feature was the grove of palms that stood on the hill
