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The steak, potatoes, and hot biscuit diffused a pleasant aroma through the cabin. "Pull up your soap-boxes, all hands!" invited Spurling. "Don't be afraid of that steak! There's plenty of it for everybody. It's liable to be the last meat we'll have for some time. The butcher doesn't go by here very often." The boys made a hearty meal.
It was one of those which Spurling had left behind over two months ago at Murder Point, when he had exchanged teams with Granger in his endeavour to escape Strangeways. Spurling, when he saw it, recognised the meaning which Granger's action implied. It was as if he had said, "So the old things are possible, are they, you villain?
"Well, look here, Laura, you put it in your work-basket," cried Hector Spurling. "You shall be my banker, and if the rightful owner turns up then I can refer him to you. If not, I suppose we must look on it as a kind of salvage-money, though I am bound to say I don't feel entirely comfortable about it."
I'll try to do my full share of the work. You can send me off the first time I shirk." He ceased and awaited the verdict, looking eagerly from one to the other. There was a moment of silence. Surprise was written large on the faces of the three Academy men. Then Spurling stepped forward and held out his hand.
"Well, then, I had a reason: if the person whom Spurling murdered is the person whom I . . ." "Indeed! So you knew that much, did you?" At mention of the word "murdered," Strangeways had swung fiercely round and confronted Granger. "Yes, I know that much.
A few days more and students and strangers would be gone, and the old town would sink into the drowsy quiet of the long summer vacation. Lounging on the notched, whittled fence, Lane, Spurling, and Stevens fell once more into earnest conversation. Spurling came from a Maine coast town. He was nineteen, tall, broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned, deliberate in speech and movements.
Spurling climbed out over the front of the stand. "I'll try to hold you for a little while," he volunteered. Soon he was smoothly receiving the pitcher's curves and lobbing them back. The combination went like clockwork. In the mean time the rest of the Camden team had taken the field and were warming up. The missing members had not yet appeared. "That'll do for a while," said the pitcher.
If you don't want to tell me, I won't trouble you by asking again; but it seems to me that we're both in the one boat now." This new sense of equality with his companion, though it was only an equality in crime, had suddenly brought about a change for the better in Spurling. He carried himself freely, in the old defiant manner, and had lost his attitude of cringing subservience.
Yet continually, in the midst of the most eager conversation, one or other of them would glance up, and cast his eyes along the river to the eastward, remembering Murder Point. It was in the early dawn of the fourth day, when, gazing toward the store, Granger descried two red squares of sail flapping against the sunrise. It was his lookout, and Spurling was asleep.
He was far away from Keewatin now, making the phantom journey to the land of his desire. "Does El Dorado seem more possible to you now?" He turned to Spurling a face which had grown thin with earnestness, "Druce, tell me quickly," he said, "how long will it take us to get there?" "To get to El Dorado? The answer to that you should know best.
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