The Pirate of Panama | Page 9

off
than we are."
"Except that he has money and can finance an expedition in search of
the treasure."
I came to earth as promptly as Darius Green.

"By Jove! that's true."
For the humiliating fact was that I had not a hundred dollars with which
to bless myself, having just lost my small inheritance in a wildcat
mining venture.
"I suppose it would take a lot of money?" she said timidly.
"Where is the treasure hidden?"
"On the coast of Panama."
"Near the canal zone?"
"I don't know. The latitude and the longitude are exactly marked, but I
haven't looked them up."
"We'll have to outfit a ship here, or make our start from Panama. Yes,
it's going to take money."
"Then we can't go any farther with it. I have no means," she said
quietly.
The lawyer in me came reluctantly to the fore.
"I suppose I ought to advise you to compromise with Captain
Bothwell."
Resolution flashed in the eyes that looked straight into mine.
"I'd rather lose it all! He wouldn't stick to any bargain he made
because--well, he would use the treasure as a lever to--get something
else he wants."
The flush in her cheeks told me what else it was he wanted, and my
heart was lifted within me. Bothwell intended to marry her, and she did
not intend that he should. My wishes ran pat with hers.
"That is final, is it?"

"Quite. If you don't want to go on with it you can drop out, Mr.
Sedgwick. I thank you for your kindness----"
"And who's talking of dropping out? I suggested compromise because I
thought I ought, but I'm the pleased man that you won't listen to my
good advice. No, no! I'm in to stay, and here's my hand on it."
"You're just spoiling for the fight," she smiled, her little hand in mine.
"Indeed, and that's a guess which rings the bell. I'll not be satisfied till I
try another fall with Mr. Bothwell."
"You're a right funny lawyer."
"I'll tell you a secret. My father was an Irish filibuster in Cuba. He died
with his back to a wall when I was five."
"Then it's in the blood."
"He had a chance to slip away by leaving his men, but Barry Sedgwick
wasn't the man to take that kind of an opportunity."
"The dear hero! How proud you must be of him," she said in the softest
of voices.
I nodded.
"He's the best reference I can give you. Now, Miss Wallace, I'll have to
tell this story--or part of it--before I can interest capital in the venture.
You are willing that I should?"
"Do whatever you must. It's in your hands."
"First, we'll make sure of the map, then; and after that you can tell me
the story of Doubloon Spit."
Together we went to the International Safe Deposit vaults, rented a box,
and put in it the map. Afterward we took a car for Golden Gate Park.
There she told me the story, in substance if not in the same words, to be

found in the next two chapters.
Those who find interest only in the conventional had better read no
farther. For this true tale runs red with the primal emotions of the old
buccaneers. It is a story of love and hate, of heroism and cowardice, of
treasure-trove and piracy on the high seas, of gaping wounds and foul
murder. If this is not to your taste, fall out. My story is not for you.
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING DOUBLOON SPIT
Robert Wallace, the father of Evelyn, was not one of the forty-niners,
but he had come to California by way of the Isthmus not very many
years later. Always of an adventurous turn, it was on his fourteenth
birthday that he ran away from his home in Baltimore to become a
stowaway on board a south-bound vessel.
It was a day of privations, and the boy endured more than his share of
them without complaint. Somehow he got along, knocking about from
one point to another, now at the gold diggings, now on the San
Francisco wharfs, and again as a deck hand on the coasters that plied
from port to port.
When he was eighteen, but well grown for his age, he fell in with an
old salt named Nat Quinn. Quinn was an old man, close to seventy, a
survival of a type of sailor which even then had all but passed away.
The sea and the wind had given Quinn a face of wrinkled leather. It was
his custom to wear rings in his ears, to carry a murderous dirk, and to
wrap around his bald head a red bandanna after the fashion of the
buccaneers of old.
He was a surly old ruffian, quick