here were times
when the others had to speak to her twice; not at all a reassuring sign.

CHAPTER XVIII

CATHEWE ADVISES AND THE ADMIRAL DISCLOSES

One day they dropped anchor in the sapphire bay of Funchal, in the
summer calm, hot and glaring; Funchal, with its dense tropical growth,
its cloud-wreathed mountains, its amethystine sisters in the faded
southeast. And for two days, while Captain Flanagan recoaled, they
played like children, jolting round in the low bullock-carts, climbing
the mountains or bumping down the corduroy road. It was the strangest
treasure hunt that ever left a home port. It was more like a page out
of a boy's frolic than a sober quest by grown-ups. That danger, menace
and death hid in covert would have appealed to them (those who knew) as
ridiculous, impossible, obsolete. The story of cutlass and pistol and
highboots had been molding in archives these eighty-odd years.
Dangers? From whom, from what direction? No one suggested the
possibility, even in jest; and the only man who could have advanced,
with reasonable assurance, that danger, real and serious, existed, was
too busy apparently with his butterfly-net. Still, he had not yet been
consulted; he was not supposed to know that this cruise was weighted
with something more than pleasure.

Fitzgerald waited with an impatience which often choked him. A secret
agent had not so adroitly joined this expedition for the pleasure of
seeing a treasure dug up from some reluctant grave. What was he after?
If indeed Breitmann was directly concerned, if he knew of the
treasure's existence, of what benefit now would be his knowledge? A
share in the finding at most. And was Breitmann one who was
conditioned of such easy stuff that he would rather be sure and share
than to strike out for all the treasure and all the risks? The more he
gave his thought to Breitmann the more that gentleman retracted into
the fog, as it were. On several occasions he had noticed signs of a
preoccupation, of suppressed excitement, of silence and moroseness.
Fitzgerald could join certain squares of the puzzle, but this led
forward scarce a step. Breitmann had entered the employ of the admiral
for the very purpose for which M. Ferraud had journeyed sundrily into
the cellar and beaten futilely on the chimney. It resolved to one
thing, and that was the secretary had arrived too late. He was sure
that Breitmann had no suspicion regarding M. Ferraud. But for a