ficers, believing a defence of the city hopeless,
salted down the government treasure chest, something like a million
dollars gold, but all in English coinage, and put it on board the
American schooner _Flirt_. They were going to run at daylight. The
American captain skinned out in the middle of the night. Go on."

"It's an old story," Grief resumed. "There was no other vessel in the
harbour. The federal leaders couldn't run. They put their backs to the
wall and held the city. Rohjas Salced, making a forced march from Quito,
raised the siege. The revolution was broken, and the one ancient steamer
that constituted the Ecuadoran navy was sent in pursuit of the _Flirt_.
They caught her, between the Banks Group and the New Hebrides, hove
to and flying distress signals. The captain had died the day
before--blackwater fever."

"And the mate?" Pankburn challenged.

"The mate had been killed a week earlier by the natives on one of the
Banks, when they sent a boat in for water. There were no navigators
left. The men were put to the torture. It was beyond international law.
They wanted to confess, but couldn't. They told of the three spikes in
the trees on the beach, but where the island was they did not know. To
the westward, far to the westward, was all they knew. The tale now goes
two ways. One is that they all died under the torture. The other is that
the survivors were swung at the yardarm. At any rate, the Ecuadoran
cruiser went home without the treasure. Johnny Black brought the three
spikes to Peenoo-Peenee, and left them at German Oscar's, but how and
where he found them he never told."

Pankburn looked hard at the whiskey bottle.

"Just two fingers," he whimpered.

Grief considered, and poured a meagre drink. Pankburn's eyes sparkled,
and he took new lease of life.

"And this is where I come in with the missing details," he said. "Johnny
Black did tell. He told my father. Wrote him from Levuka, before he came
on to die at Peenoo-Peenee. My father had saved his life one rough-house
night in Valparaiso. A Chink pearler, out of Thursday Island,
prospecting for new grounds to the north of New Guinea, traded for the
three spikes with a nigger. Johnny Black bought them for copper weight.
He didn't dream any more than the Chink, but coming back he stopped for
hawksbill turtle at the very beach where you say the mate of the
_Flirt_ was killed. Only he wasn't killed. The Banks Islanders held
him prisoner, and he was dyin