Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/223

has stolen my button. Ah, this world of thieves! It is too much. I would kill for that button. It was my favorite button. One, two, three— Why there are ten. One, two, three, four—” About him the dancers rocked and the air was reeking with the shrill cries of the flutes.

Captain Sawkins glowered at the dancers. He firmly believed that to dance was to go to hell by a short route. Beside him, Captain Zeigler sadly watched the flow of liquor. This Ziegler was called the Tavern Keeper of the Sea. It was his practice, after a raid, to keep the men at sea until they had spent their plunder buying the rum which he supplied. Once he had a mutiny, it is said, because for three months he sailed around and around one island. He could not help it. The men still had money and he still had rum. This night he was saddened by these barrels of liquor which were being drunk without any obbligato of coins ringing on the counter. It was unnatural to him and mischievous.

Henry Morgan was sitting alone in the Hall of Audience. He could barely hear the crying music of the dance. Throughout the day little bands of men had come in, bearing bits of belated treasure dug from the earth or drawn with iron hooks from the cisterns. One old woman had swallowed a diamond to save it, but the searchers dug for that, too, and found it.

Now a gray twilight was in the Hall of Audience. All through the day Henry Morgan had been sitting in his tall chair, and the day had changed