cessitate my rescuing you! I can't leave the Light after dark, you know, except to save drowning mariners."
"Good luck to you!" Elspeth cried, as she and Jim watched the Ailouros bob into the current and then fill away steadily.
Garth steered and Joan handled the sheet, and they talked about treasure.
"What was the tales of the Cardiff you could tell, mate?" Captain Crosstrees asked, squinting a little as he watched the sunlit head of the sail.
"Oh, naught of great account," Ben Bobstay said, after some consideration, "'cept that I knows the Cardiff. I dealt wi' her an' wi' her blackhearted captain afore ever I signed wi' you, sir. Why, I shipped as cabin-boy on the Cardiff. The year 1739 it were, long afore you was thort of, sir. She were little better nor a pirate, though little I knew o' that when I signed aboard her. I couldn't tell you harf o' the evil doin's upon that ship, but many was the day when I lay flat behind a hatch-coaming, whilst the bullets hopped around me and the cutlasses sang past my ears. For the Cardiff would be grappled to some honest India-man, and the rivers of gold and treasures, sir, that
