But my pockets were empty; all my money had been taken by the buccaneers.  And then, with a start of recollection, I remembered the crown piece that hung by a riband about my neck, and with the thought a flash of inspiration shot through my mind.  I ran forward to the spot where Noah was already heaping the sticks for the fire, and, tearing open my shirt, I displayed the silver coin.

“Look, Noah,” I cried, “you shall have this, and five hundred dollars beside by and by.  Listen while I tell you about it.”

And then I told how, ever since I had worn that coin about my neck, I had had the best of good fortune.  It had brought me friends, and raised me from a lowly position.  I had been imprisoned and escaped; I had been shot at, without scathe.  I had gained what I prized most in all the world.  I fear I exaggerated; certainly I had never before ascribed any talismanic power to the coin which I had kept for no other purpose than to humiliate the man who had humiliated me.  But in this extremity I saw the possibility of working on the negro’s superstitious mind, and I would have racked my invention to give the piece the most marvelous virtues under heaven.

But I had said enough.  With a stare of wonderment Noah took the coin in his hand, turned it over, examined it, handled it as though it was a sacred object.  I lifted the string from my neck.

“There, take it; ’tis yours,” I said, handing it to him, and then, by a happy afterthought, I myself slipped it over the negro’s head.  He saw the white coin lying on his dusky breast, a smile overspread his face, most wondrously obliterating all the lines of malice and hate; and then, turning swiftly, he went to the tree, with me at his heels, and cut the cords.

Cludde fell fainting into my arms, and as I laid him on the ground and begged for water (not a drop had passed his lips for thirty-six hours), I wondered whether he would ever know how I had paid the stored-up interest I had vowed to pay.

Chapter 26:  We Hold A Council Of War.

For some time I was in doubt whether the agonies Cludde had suffered would not prove fatal.  He lay long unconscious, and when his eyes at last opened he shrieked aloud, with so wild a look in his eyes that I feared his reason was gone.  But I, who had not left his side since he was loosed from the tree, spoke to him quietly, assuring him that he was safe, and gave him water to drink, and by and by he was soothed to quietude and slept like a tired child.  And then I lay beside him, worn out with the stress and agitations of this long day, and together (strange chance!) we who had been mortal enemies found repose on the bosom of mother earth.

Night came down upon us, and the stars were blinking in the dark vault above when we awoke.  Uncle Moses brought us food—­birds the negroes had snared and roasted, and root plants they had grubbed up; and as we ate we talked.