Ramage began tapping the table with his fingers, and Jackson started again.
"After you left with Mr Yorke, sir, we got to thinking about the skeleton, sir."
"Come on, Jackson, out with it, do you want me to wheedle every word out of you?"
"The skeleton was neither right under the tree nor clear to one side, sir."
"I can't see -" Ramage's voice broke off, because suddenly he could see that the position of the skeleton was odd. If the tree marked the grave, it should have been directly over the body, but it was to one side, four feet down, and only the side roots had grown through it. The tree had been planted - or the seed began growing - after the body was buried. Did it matter? But Jackson had not finished.
"Stafford and me tried to work out why. We couldn't think of anything, so after you'd gone we decided to do some more digging. The rest of the lads were keen, sir."
"Where did you dig?"
"All round the tree, sir, in a big circle and we found lots more skeletons."
"Did you, by Jove!"
"Yes, sir, eight so far and still more coming up."
Maxine sighed. Ramage glanced at her and saw she was as white as a sheet. In a moment he was at her side, holding her against him by the shoulders.
"Breathe deeply," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, we are crude oafs."
'Non," she whispered, "it's not the talk of bodies and skeletons; I just started thinking of ... things. I'm all right now."
Ramage gestured to Jackson to leave the room and as the door closed he turned to Maxine and took her in his arms. It began, he realized later, as a gesture to reassure her; but she closed her eyes and raised her lips and a moment later they were clinging to each other as desperately as if they were drowning.
"Oh, Nicholas," she whispered, what seemed an age later, "I've wanted to kiss you for so long..."
"We must be careful - people will..."
"I don't care," she said. "And my father and mother have guessed already."
Ramage thought of her husband. Had she forgotten? And what did her parents think, now they had guessed? They could hardly approve of their married daughter having an affair with a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.
"Kiss me again," she whispered, "and then you must go to Jackson. But, my darling, don't let this treasure hunt dominate your life."
He held her tightly. "I've found my treasure!"
"It took you long enough," she said.
An hour later Ramage and Yorke were standing on the edge of a large semi-circular hole, the tree forming the centre of the radii. The skeletons had not been moved; the seamen had simply started digging again to the side as soon as they had found one and cleared away the earth.
"Look, sir," Jackson said as he jumped into the hole and moved from one skeleton to another, pointing. The top of each skull was badly damaged.
"A shot in the back of the head," Ramage said.
"Yes, sir. And their arms are together."
"Hands tied behind them, shot in the back of the head, and pitched into a big open grave," Ramage said.
"That's what we thought," Jackson said. "But we can't understand why, sir."
Ramage began thinking aloud for Yorke's benefit.
"A mass execution, but who were the victims? Perhaps pirates, if one band attacked another, or if the members of a band quarrelled? Or a party of slaves who were killed to ensure the secrecy of some work they'd been doing?"
"Slaves," Yorke said, as if to himself. "Made to dig their own grave."
Ramage nodded. "It would make more sense because we'll find at least twenty skeletons if this is a circular grave. To tie up and execute twenty pirates would probably mean at least twenty more."
"But why do it?" Yorke said softly. "It doesn't make sense. There's no point in leaving a poem as a clue to a mass grave."
Ramage stared at Yorke. Perhaps there was treasure as well as skeletons. Most people would not dig below the level of the skeletons: one glimpse of a human bone and a man would be reluctant to disturb a grave. That was why he had stopped the original digging and left the men to fill in the trenches after the first skeleton had been found.
He was reluctant to let all the old excitement well up again after his recent disappointments but perhaps those two converging lines of shells did mark sbmething else ...
When he pointed to the spot, Yorke nodded.
"I don't understand what the devil it's all about," Yorke said, "but I think we should carry on digging there."
Ramage told Jackson to set four men to work and he and Yorke settled down to the worst wait of all.
The men had to chop more than they had to dig, and the roots of the tree snaking down into the earth were springy yet unyielding. More than an hour had passed before one of the men, digging with a pickaxe in a corner of the hole, gave a grunt and, turning slightly, struck again with the pick.
"Jacko!" he called. "Wot abaht this?"
Ramage, talking to Yorke five yards away, noticed that the man's voice was puzzled: whatever he had found it was not a skeleton.
Jackson jumped lightly into the hole and crouched down. Ramage walked deliberately slowly towards them and heard the muttering of voices. Then Jackson leapt out of the hole, knelt before Ramage with a flourish, and opened both hands. In his palms were several coins which shone dully.
Gold doubloons, dollars, pieces of eight and reals ... He rubbed a dollar to make it shine. The Spanish "cobb" of seaman's slang and recruiting posters. He nodded and passed it to Yorke.
"Are there many?" he said in an offhand voice.
"Hundreds, sir - all spilling out of a rotted wooden box."
"I'm so glad," he said in the same off-hand voice. "You'd better send Stafford to fetch more Marines; we need a strong guard on here, and ask Mr Southwick to tell our guests we have - er, had some success."
It was remarkable how calm you could be when you succeeded.
The next eight days were so unreal that Ramage felt he was not just dreaming, but dreaming of a dream. Most of the seamen had been moved up to Punta Tamarindo, slinging their hammocks between trees, to save the long walk every morning. Under the casuarina tree seamen dug carefully, while on the landward side of the open space the carpenter's crew worked with saws, hammers and nails making strong crates in which to stow the treasure.
The coins were sorted into different denominations, put into canvas bags made from sail cloth - "a quarter o' the size o' a normal shroud" as Stafford commented - and sewn up. Each bag was then put into a wooden crate and pummelled until it took up a square shape. Then the lid of the crate was put on and nailed down securely.
Ramage limited each crate to half a hundredweight, and after the money had been checked by Southwick, the details of the contents were painted on the outside. A pair of long poles secured along the sides enabled two men to carry the crate comfortably like a stretcher, and it was taken away to be stowed. One of the houses in the village had been nicknamed "The Treasury" and was closely guarded by the Marines.
The gold and silver plate and ornaments - they ranged from dishes to candelabra - were dealt with in much the same way. They took up larger crates since they were bulkier and lighter than coins, but every item was described in an inventory kept by Southwick. When they did not know the name or purpose of a particular vessel or ornament, a small sketch was added with the main dimensions and weight.
As the totals of coin, plate, ornaments and jewellery mounted in what came to be called "The Treasure Log", Ramage was thankful that the men still regarded the digging and packing as a great game.
He had talked to Southwick and Yorke about a potential danger: the survivors from the two ships numbered some seventy-five seamen, but there were only three King's officers and a dozen Marines. If the seamen from both ships decided to keep the treasure, killing officers in their beds at night would present no problems. With the officers dead, the corporal of Marines would be a fool if he tried to stop his men joining the seamen...