A moment's silence, during which they all looked at me. "A galleon,"
then said Paradise softly.

"They that sailed her yesterday are to-day at the bottom of the sea," I
continued. "Alackaday! so are one hundred thousand pezos of gold, three
thousand bars of silver, ten frails of pearls, jewels uncounted, cloth
of gold and cloth of silver. She was a very rich prize."

The circle sucked in their breath. "All at the bottom of the sea?"
queried Red Gil, with gloating eyes fixed upon the smiling water. "Not
one pezo left, not one little, little pearl?"

I shook my head and heaved a prodigious sigh. "The treasure is gone," I
said, "and the men with whom I took it are gone. I am a captain with
neither ship nor crew. I take you, my friends, for a ship and crew
without a captain. The inference is obvious."

The ring gaped with wonder, then strange oaths arose. Red Gil broke into
a bellow of angry laughter, while the Spaniard glared like a catamount
about to spring. "So you would be our captain?" said Paradise, picking
up another shell, and poising it upon a hand as fine and small as a
woman's.

"Faith, you might go farther and fare worse," I answered, and began to
hum a tune. When I had finished it, "I am Kirby," I said, and waited to
see if that shot should go wide or through the hull.

For two minutes the dash of the surf and the cries of the wheeling sea
fowl made the only sound in that part of the world; then from those
half-clad rapscallions arose a shout of "Kirby!"--a shout in which the