Spanish Gold. George A. Birmingham
knew priest nor parson yet but was desperate hard to get the better of in a matter of money. I'll tell you now what you ought to do. Split the differ and say twenty-five pounds."
"Well, rather than stop here all night talking about it," said Meldon, "I'll call it twenty-five pounds."
"And a pound back out of that for luck," said Doyle.
"No, not a penny back. Twenty-five, money down."
Doyle drew his chair over to Langton and whispered.
"It's a fair offer. You'll find it hard to better it. The Major now would have asked fifty for his old Spindrift. It's my advice to you, Mr. Langton, to close on it this minute before he has time to sleep on the offer. Maybe to-morrow morning he might be asking the advice of some one that would be for putting up the price on you. What do you say now?"
"I'll give it," said Langton, "on your assurance that the boat is as represented."
"The gentleman takes your offer, Mr. Meldon," said Doyle. "Twenty-five pounds down and the boat to be returned in good condition, all damages to be made good. What do you say now to a drop of something to wet the bargain?"
But Meldon would not drink. He went home to his lodgings and meditated, as he smoked a final pipe, on the glories and splendours which would be his when he had found the treasure on Inishgowlan. His conscience was quite untroubled by the thought of his bargain with Langton. The boat was rotten—so rotten that a man who knew anything about boats would hesitate to go to sea in her. If Langton's friend knew no more about boats than Langton did, some kind of accident was certain to happen. Meldon consoled himself with the thought that it would happen before they got far enough away from land to run any serious risk of drowning. Moy Bay was full of islands, and the water was always calm in summer time inside the bay. If the Aureole did go to pieces Langton and his friend could row to one of the islands in the punt. Meldon's punt was a good one.
CHAPTER IV
THE Spindrift, close hauled, thrashed her way out; towards Inishgowlan against a south-westerly breeze. The coast to the east, a low dark line, lay almost hidden in the haze. The entrance to Moy Bay was scarcely distinguishable. Major Kent, in an oilskin coat, sat at the tiller. The Rev. J. J. Meldon, most unclerically clad in a blue fisherman's jersey, old grey tweed trousers, and a pair of sea-boots, sprawled on the deck near the mast. He was apparently indifferent to the sheets of spray which broke over the bow of the boat now and then, when she struck one of the short seas which happened to be a little larger than its fellows. His red hair was a tangle of thick wet curls. His face and the backs of his hands were speckled with white where the Salt had dried on them. The skin of his nose, under the influence of bright sunshine and sea-water, already showed signs of beginning to peel off. He had a pair of field-glasses in his hand, which he polished occasionally with a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, and through which he gazed at the island in front of him. To the south lay Innishmore, the larger of the two islands. Dead ahead was Inishgowlan, a long green bank as it seemed, sloping down eastward, dotted over with small white cabins, and divided into tiny fields of the most irregular shapes imaginable.
"In another half-hour," said the Major, "we'll be well under the lee of the island and the water will be a bit calmer. Then we'll have something to eat."
"I suppose we anchor in that bay," said Meldon, pointing forward.
He was more interested in the island and in the adventure before him than in the prospect of luncheon.
"Yes. It's a fine, safe bay, good bottom, perfect shelter from the west, south, and north, and deep water up to the very shore. You could anchor a man-of-war in that bay and lie snug the whole winter through."
"I thought you told me," said Meldon, a few minutes later, "that there was nobody upon the island except natives."
"No more there is. At least, there wasn't last time I was there five years ago."
"And that they live in thatched cabins."
"Yes."
"Well, they don't. There's a galvanised iron hut on the grass just above the shore of the bay."
"Nonsense! There can't be such a thing on Inishgowlan. Why would the people fetch a galvanised iron house out from the mainland when they can build anything they like out of stones ready to their hands?"
"I don't know. But the thing's there."
"Do you take the tiller for a minute," said the Major, "and give me the glasses."
He gazed at the island.
"You're right enough," he said. "The thing's there. It's exactly like the one the engineers lived in when they were making the railway down to Achill. Now I wonder who the deuce put a thing like that on Inishgowlan?"
"They couldn't be building a railway on the island, could they?"
"No, they couldn't. Who'd build a railway on an island a mile long?"
"The Government would," said Meldon, "if the fancy struck them. But it's more likely to be a pier, and the Board of Works engineer will be living in that hut."
"It can't be a pier. They built a pier there only three years ago. You can see it, if you look, on the; south side of the bay."
"That wouldn't stop them building another," said Meldon. "I dare say you've observed, Major, how singularly little originality there is about Chief Secretaries. One of them, whose name is lost in the mists of antiquity, thought of piers and seed potatoes, and since then all his successors have gone on building piers and giving out seed potatoes. They never hit on anything original. Now if I was a Chief Secretary I'd strike out a line of my own. When I found I had to build something I'd run up a few round towers."
"I dare say you would."
"Of course there would be difficulties in the way. A pier is a comparatively simple thing to build, because part of it must be in the sea and the rest on some beach which nobody in particular owns. Whereas I should have to get a site in somebody's field for my round tower, and I should probably have the League denouncing me for land grabbing."
The Major took the tiller again, and Meldon resumed his inspection of the island through the glasses.
"Do you know," he said after a while, "if there is a Government official of any kind in that iron hut it may turn out awkward for us."
"How?"
"I'm not quite sure of the law on the subject, but I've always understood that the Government sets up to have a claim to all treasure that's found buried or hidden anywhere. It won't do to let this fellow, whoever he is, find out what we're after."
Major Kent, who had never taken the treasure-seeking very seriously, made no reply to this remark.
"We'll have to adopt a disguise," said Meldon. "I told you all along that we probably would."
I won't——"
"Now don't make that remark about the false beard again. What we have to do is to invent some plausible excuse for spending a week on the island."
"Tell him we're out trawling."
"That won't do. In the first place we shan't trawl; in the second place he'd ask where our nets were. Those fellows who spend their lives watching other people doing things develop an unholy curiosity about everybody else's business. We must hit on something more likely than that. Suppose we told him we were out to learn Irish?"
"Stuff!" said the Major; "you wouldn't take in a newspaper correspondent with that tale. Just look at me. I've turned fifty, and I'm developing an elderly spread. Do I look like the kind of man who would go off to a desert island to learn Irish?"
"Oh, well, there may not be an engineer there after all. It'll be time enough to think of what we'll say