Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/210

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196
DEAD MAN'S GOLD

mistaking it. See the spout and the lid? Now, Lefty."

Larkin took out his compass, loosened the set-screw, tapped it, and surveyed the rock.

"So that's it," he said. "Now, then." He spoke the next sentence slowly as if trying to repeat something by rote—exactly as he had got it from the lips of the dying Lyman. "From the top of the rock Healy shows you, west-by-north, eighty degrees west-of-north."

"Sure you've got the figures right?" asked Healy. "Didn't you write them down?"

"Sure I did," grinned Larkin, taking out his knife. "Sure I did. Once hon a bit of pyper, before I come hout to you folks that night. Then I burned up the pyper hafter I put 'em where nobody would be likely to find 'em, case they went snoopin' round me w'ile I was asleep."

He loosened his belt and hitched round his stout khaki breeches, turning down the band and ripping the stitches that attached a square of linen which bore the maker's name and size marks. He tore it loose and exhibited on the back of the linen letters and figures in indelible pencil, turned purple by the sweat of his body but quite legible.


W x N. 80" W OF N.


He put his compass in his pocket and started scrambling up the worn ledges of the rock like a monkey, Stone hard on his heels and Harvey follow-