It
isn't here."
Gobal handed the chart over. "I can't go with you, but I take your word;
I can say no more. If you cheat me I'll kill you; that's all."
"Let me give a bond," said Tarboe quickly. "If I saw much gold perhaps
I couldn't trust myself, but there's someone to be trusted, who'll swear
for me. If my daughter Joan give her word--"
"Is she with you?"
"Yes, in the Ninety-Nine, now. I'll send Bissonnette for her. Yes, yes,
I'll send, for gold is worse than bad whisky when it gets into a man's
head. Joan will speak for me."
Ten minutes later Joan was in Gobal's cabin, guaranteeing for her father
the fulfilment of his bond. An hour afterwards the Free-and-Easy was
moving up stream with her splintered mast and ragged sails, and the
Ninety-Nine was looking up and over towards the Bay of Belle Amour. She
reached it in the late afternoon of the next day. Bissonnette did not
know the object of the expedition, but he had caught the spirit of the
affair, and his eyes were like spots of steel as he held the sheet or
took his turn at the tiller. Joan's eyes were now on the sky, now on the
sail, and now on the land, weighing as wisely as her father the advantage
of the wind, yet dwelling on that cave where skeletons kept ward over the
spoils of a pirate ship.
They arrived, and Tarboe took the Ninety-Nine warily in on a little wind
off the land.
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