Dirk advanced to his son, and kissed him on the forehead.

“My son,” he said, “pardon me, and you, Red Martin, pardon me also.  I spoke in my haste.  I spoke as a fool, who, at my age, should have known better.  But, oh!  I tell you that I wish that this cursed treasure, these cases of precious gems and these kegs of hoarded gold, had been shivered to the winds of heaven with the timbers of the ship Swallow.  For, mark you, Ramiro has escaped, and with him another man, and they will know well that having the night to hide it, you did not destroy those jewels with the ship.  They will track you down, these Spanish sleuthhounds, filled with the lust of blood and gold, and it will be well if the lives of every one of us do not pay the price of the secret of the burying-place of the wealth of Hendrik Brant.”

He ceased, pale and trembling, and a silence fell upon the room and all in it, a sad and heavy silence, for in his voice they caught the note of prophecy.  Martin broke it.

“It may be so, master,” he said; “but, your pardon, you should have thought of that before you undertook this duty.  There was no call upon you to send the Heer Foy and myself to The Hague to bring away this trash, but you did it as would any other honest man.  Well, now it is done, and we must take our chance, but I say this—­if you are wise, my masters, yes, and you ladies also, before you leave this room you will swear upon the Bible, every one of you, never to whisper the word treasure, never to think of it except to believe that it is gone—­lost beneath the waters of the Haarlemer Meer.  Never to whisper it, no, mistress, not even to the Heer Adrian, your son who lies sick abed upstairs.”

“You have learnt wisdom somewhere of late years, Martin, since you stopped drinking and fighting,” said Dirk drily, “and for my part before God I swear it.”

“And so do I.”  “And I.”  “And I.”  “And I,” echoed the others, Martin, who spoke last, adding, “Yes, I swear that I will never speak of it; no, not even to my young master, Adrian, who lies sick abed upstairs.”

Adrian made a good, though not a very quick recovery.  He had lost a great deal of blood, but the vessel closed without further complications, so that it remained only to renew his strength by rest and ample food.  For ten days or so after the return of Foy and Martin, he was kept in bed and nursed by the women of the house.  Elsa’s share in this treatment was to read to him from the Spanish romances which he admired.  Very soon, however, he found that he admired Elsa herself even more than the romances, and would ask her to shut the book that he might talk to her.  So long as his conversation was about himself, his dreams, plans and ambitions, she fell into it readily enough; but when he began to turn it upon herself, and to lard it with compliment and amorous innuendo, then she demurred, and fled to the romances for refuge.