both. I insisted that I might be allowed at least to carry my
automatic pistol. "Suppose some one tries to take the treasure from
us?" I pointed out.

"No one," said Edgar severely, "would be such an ass as to imagine
we are carrying buried treasure in a suit-case. He will think it
contains pajamas."

"For local color, then," I begged, "I want to say in my story that
I went heavily armed."

"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,