My friends listened to my yarn in characteristic fashion, John Saunders’s eyes more like mice peeping out of a cupboard than ever, and Charlie Webster’s huge bulk poised almost threateningly, as it were, with the keenness of his attention.  His deep-set kind brown eyes glowed like a boy’s as I went on, but by their dangerous kindling at certain points of the story, those dealing with our pock-marked friend, Henry P. Tobias, Jr., I soon realised where, for him, the chief interest of the story lay.

“The ——­ rebel!” he roared out once or twice, using an adjective peculiarly English.

When I come to think of it, perhaps there is no one in His Britannic Majesty’s dominions so wholeheartedly English as Charlie Webster.  He is an Englishman of a larger mould than we are accustomed to to-day.  He seems rather to belong to a former more rugged era—­an Englishman say of Elizabeth’s or Nelson’s day; big, rough, and simple, honest to the core, slow to anger, but terrible when roused—­a true heart of oak, a man with massive, slow-moving, but immensely efficient, “governing” brain.  A born commander, utterly without fear, yet always cool-headed and never rash.  If there are more Englishmen like him, I don’t think you will find them in London or anywhere in the British Isles.  You must go for them to the British colonies.  There, rather than at home, the sacred faith in the British Empire is still kept passionately alive.  And, at all events, Charlie Webster may truly be said to have one article of faith—­the glory of the British Empire.  To him, therefore, the one unforgivable sin is treason against that; as probably to die for England—­after having notched a good account of her enemies on his unerring rifle—­would be for him not merely a crown of glory, but the purest and completest joy that could happen to him.

Therefore it was—­somewhat, I will own, to my disappointment—­that for him my story had but one moral—­the treason of Henry P. Tobias, Jr.  The treasure might as well have had no existence, so far as he was concerned, and the grim climax in the cave drew nothing from him but a preoccupied nod.  And John Saunders was little more satisfactory.  Both of them allowed me to end in silence.  They both seemed to be thinking deeply.

“Well?” I said, somewhat dashed, as one whose story has fallen down on an anti-climax.  Still no response.

“I must say you two are a great audience,” I said presently, perhaps rather childishly nettled.

“What’s happened to your imagination!”

“It’s a very serious matter,” said John Saunders, and I realised that it was not my crony, but the Secretary to the Treasury of his Britannic Majesty’s Government at Nassau that was talking.  As he spoke, he looked across at Charlie Webster, almost as if forgetting me.  “Something should be done about it, eh, Charlie?” he continued.

“——­ traitor!” roared Charlie, once more employing that British adjective.  And then he turned to me: