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"Oh! you chaps, you as I've seen grow up from babbies aren't theer one o' ye to tak' the old man's word an' believe as I seen un?" The cracked old voice sounded more broken than usual, and I saw a tear crawling slowly down the Ancient's furrowed cheek. Nobody answered, and there fell a silence broken only by the shuffle and scrape of heavy boots and the setting down of tankards.
Upon the still evening air rose the sharp tap, tap of the Ancient's stick, whereat up started the smith, and, coming to the forge, began raking out the fire with great dust and clatter, as the old man hobbled up, saluting us cheerily as he came. "Lord!" he exclaimed, pausing in the doorway to lean upon his stick and glance from one to the other of us with his quick, bright eyes.
Hereupon the man Dutton, all perspiring apology, as usual, shuffled forward, and, mopping his reeking brow, delivered himself in this wise: "W'ich I must say meanin' no offence to nobody, an' if so be, apologizin' w'ich I must say me 'avin' seen 'em they was leastways," he added, as he met the Ancient's piercing eye, "leastways they might 'ave been, w'ich if they ain't no matter!"
First I directed the Ancient's attention to the mouth of the cave which at this distance showed as a white circle of light. He looked at it and then at me with grave inquiry. I made motions to suggest that he should proceed there, repeating the word "Sun" in the Orofenan tongue. He understood at once, though whether he read my mind rather than what I said I am not sure.
The latitude and longitude are mine, and the bearings from the oak ribs on the shoal to Lion's Head, and the cross-bearings from the points unnamable, I only know. I only still live of all that brave, mad, scallywag ship's company . . . " "Will you sign the articles to that?" the Jew demanded, cutting in on the ancient's maunderings. "What port do you wind up the cruise in?" Daughtry asked.
"And I must say, sir," he went on easily, though saying what he would not have said had it not been for what he was almost certain he sensed of the ancient's anxiousness, "that the South Seas is just naturally lousy with buried treasure. There's Keeling-Cocos, millions 'n' millions of it, pounds sterling, I mean, waiting for the lucky one with the right steer."
"There was a story about it, and one quite fit for Christmas evening, if you're in the mood to hear it." The thin voice was penetrating. At the promise of a story silence fell on the company, and Mr. Penrose told his tale, vouching as his authority an erstwhile "oldest inhabitant," now gathered to his fathers; for the tale dated back some eighty years, to the date of the ancient's early manhood.
When his tremulous shoulders were no longer visible, the Prophet opened Marcus Aurelius, and, seating himself in a corner of the big couch by the fire, crossed his legs one over the other and began to read that timid Ancient's consolatory, but unconvincing, remarks.
These storms are known by the name of tornadoes, and one would be almost inclined to think that the ancient's belief of the torrid zone being of a fiery nature, and too hot for mankind to live in, originated in the exaggerated reports of them, which might have gradually found their way into the part of the world then known, and from which they were not very far distant.
Hereupon I must needs contrast George's happy future with my dreary one, and fall bitterly to cursing myself; and, sitting on the Ancient's stool in the corner, I covered my face, and my thoughts were very black. Now presently, as I sat thus, I became conscious of a very delicate perfume in the air, and also, that some one had entered quietly.
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