"
"Say it, then," snapped Edgar. "But you can't DO it! Not with me,
you can't! How do I know you mightn't----" He shook his head
warily.
It was a day in early October, the haze of Indian summer was in the
air, and as we crossed the North River by the Twenty- third Street
Ferry the sun flashed upon the white clouds overhead and the
tumbling waters below. On each side of us great vessels with the
Blue Peter at the fore lay at the wharfs ready to cast off, or were
already nosing their way down the channel toward strange and
beautiful ports. Lamport and Holt were rolling down to Rio; the
Royal Mail's MAGDALENA, no longer "white and gold," was off to
Kingston, where once seven pirates swung in chains; the CLYDE was
on her way to Hayti where the buccaneers came from; the MORRO
CASTLE was bound for Havana, which Morgan, king of all the pirates,
had once made his own; and the RED D was steaming to Porto Cabello
where Sir Francis Drake, as big a buccaneer as any of them, lies
entombed in her harbor. And I was setting forth on a
buried-treasure expedition on a snub-nosed, flat- bellied,
fresh-water ferry-boat, bound for Jersey City! No one will ever
know my sense of humiliation. And, when the Italian boy insulted my
immaculate tan shoes by pointing at them and saying, "Shine?" I
could have slain him. Fancy digging for buried treasure in freshly
varnished boots! But Edgar did not mind. To him there was nothing
lacking; it was just as it should be.
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