“You’d meet them all there, from time to time, sir--Coxon, Tristian, Yanky Dutch, Mackett; oh, all of them.” “All friends of yours?” “No, sir. Some of them is French and Dutch. They come from Tortuga and away east by Curaçoa. That’s a point I can tell you about. Don’t you make too free with the French and Dutch, sir. You stick by your own countrymen. I’ll tell you why, sir. If you let them ducks in to share, the first you’ll know is they’ve put in a claim for their own country. They’ll say that the settlement is theirs; that we’re intruding on them. Oh, they will. I know ’em. And they’ll trick you, too. They’ll get their own men-of-war to come and kick you out, like they done at St. Kitts, and at Tortuga.” “That would hardly suit. But is La Sound’s more of a French and Dutch resort than Springer’s?” “Yes, sir. Since Captain Sharp’s raid. Ever since that, we’ve been as it were more separated. And then there was trouble at the isle of Ash; they done us out of a sloop; so we done them in return. Springer’s is the place the Englishmen goes to, now. Oh, and Golden Island, this easterly island here. But Springer’s Key is the best of them. Though we goes to La Sound’s Key, mind you, whenever we’re planning a raid.” “Then---- By the way. Who is Springer?” “He was a privateer, sir. He got lost on the Main one time. He was in Alleston’s ship at that time. He got lost, out hunting for warree. He wandered around in the woods there, living on sapadilloes, till one day he come to a river, and floated down it on a log. He’d sense enough for that. Generally men go mad in the woods at the end of the first day.” “Mad,” said Olivia. “But why do they do that?” “It’s the loneliness, Mrs. Stukeley. You seem shut in, in those woods. Shut in. A great green wall. It seems to laugh at you. And you get afraid, and then you get thirsty. Oh, I’ve felt it. You go mad. Lucky for you, you do, Mrs. Stukeley.” “How horrible. Isn’t that awful, Charles?” “Yes. Awful. But Springer kept his head, you say?” “No, sir. I’m inclined to think Springer got a turn. The sun’ll give it you. Or that green wall laughing; or just thirst. When I talked with Springer, he told me as he come to a little stone city on a hill, all grown over with green. An old ruined city. About a hundred houses. Quite small. And what d’you think was in it, Mrs. Stukeley?” “I don’t know at all. Nothing very horrible, I hope. No. Not if it’s going to be horrible.” “Well. It was horrible. But there was gold on every one of them. Gold plates. Gold masks. And gold all over the rooms. Now if that’s true, it’s mighty queer. But I think he’d got a turn, ma’am. I don’t think things was right with Springer. Living all alone in the woods, and then living all alone on the key. It very likely put him off. I was to have gone with him, searching for it, one time; but I never did.” Stukeley seemed to wake up suddenly. “You must have been a fool,” he said. “Why? Acos I thought of going?” said Cammock.