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Page 70
"I am dull," said he gloomily.
"Thank you!"
"I mean that I am stupid, doubly stupid," he corrected.
"Cricket will be a cure for that."
"I doubt it," approaching dangerous ground once more.
"Let's go and talk to Captain Flanagan, then."
"There!" with sudden spirit, "the very thing I've been wanting!"'
It was of no importance that they both knew this to be a prevarication
about which St. Peter would not trouble his hoary head nor take the
pains to indite in his great book of demerits.
But all through that bright day the girl thought, and there were times
when the others had to speak to her twice; not at all a reassuring sign.
CHAPTER XVIII
CATHEWE ADVISES AND THE ADMIRAL DISCLOSES
One day they dropped anchor in the sapphire bay of Funchal, in the
summer calm, hot and glaring; Funchal, with its dense tropical growth,
its cloud-wreathed mountains, its amethystine sisters in the faded
southeast. And for two days, while Captain Flanagan recoaled, they
played like children, jolting round in the low bullock-carts, climbing
the mountains or bumping down the corduroy road. It was the strangest
treasure hunt that ever left a home port. It was more like a page out
of a boy's frolic than a sober quest by grown-ups. That danger, menace
and death hid in covert would have appealed to them (those who knew) as
ridiculous, impossible, obsolete. The story of cutlass and pistol and
highboots had been molding in archives these eighty-odd years.
Dangers? From whom, from what direction? No one suggested the
possibility, even in jest; and the only man who could have advanced,
with reasonable assurance, that danger, real and serious, existed, was
too busy apparently with his butterfly-net. Still, he had not yet been
consulted; he was not supposed to know that this cruise was weighted
with something more than pleasure.
Fitzgerald waited with an impatience which often choked him. A secret
agent had not so adroitly joined this expedition for the pleasure of
seeing a treasure dug up from some reluctant grave. What was he after?
If indeed Breitmann was directly concerned, if he knew of the
treasure's existence, of what benefit now would be his knowledge? A
share in the finding at most. And was Breitmann one who was
conditioned of such easy stuff that he would rather be sure and share
than to strike out for all the treasure and all the risks? The more he
gave his thought to Breitmann the more that gentleman retracted into
the fog, as it were. On several occasions he had noticed signs of a
preoccupation, of suppressed excitement, of silence and moroseness.
Fitzgerald could join certain squares of the puzzle, but this led
forward scarce a step. Breitmann had entered the employ of the admiral
for the very purpose for which M. Ferraud had journeyed sundrily into
the cellar and beaten futilely on the chimney. It resolved to one
thing, and that was the secretary had arrived too late. He was sure
that Breitmann had no suspicion regarding M. Ferraud. But for a casual
glance at the little man's hands, neither would he have had any. He
determined to prod M. Ferraud. He was well trained in repression; so,
while he often lost patience, there was never any external sign of it.
Besides, there was another affair which over-shadowed it and at times
engulfed it.
Love. The cross-tides of sense and sentiment made a pretty
disturbance. And still further, there was another counter-tide. Love
does not necessarily make a young man keen-sighted, but it generally
highly develops his talent for suspicion. By subtle gradations,
Breitmann had shifted in Fitzgerald's mind from a possible friend to a
probable rival. Breitmann did not now court his society when the
smoking bouts came round, or when the steward brought the whisky and
soda after the ladies had retired. Breitmann was moody, and whatever
variance his moods had, they retained the gray tone. This Fitzgerald
saw and dilated upon; and it rankled when he thought that this
hypothetical adventurer had rights, level and equal to his, always
supposing he had any.
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