George A. Birmingham

“ But if it's like any other kind of clay it'll be soft stuff, and any hole there might have been two hundred years ago will be all washed away or covered up now."
"In the first place," said Meldon, "we've only got Higginbotham's word for it that the island is pliocene clay, and in the next place I don't believe pliocene clay is that kind of stuff at all. It stands to reason that it can't be. Why, man, if it was anything like common clay the whole island would be gone ages ago. ”

“ Elsewhere there are long shelves of rock which are never more than half-covered by the waves, and wildernesses of huge boulders, worn into all sorts of fantastic shapes, among which on calm days the sea winds itself into curiously fascinating pools and channels, where in storms there is a welter of foam and spray and angry water. ”

“ I doubt very much if there's any treasure there at all. And I'm sure we won't find it."
"Don't croke," said Meldon. "You get into your duds and light your pipe. I'll wash up and get out the punt. It's getting on for eight o'clock and we ought to be off."
An elderly man and five out of the nine children resident on the island stood on the end of the pier when Meldon and the Major landed. The man was clad in a very dirty white flannel jacket and a pair of yellowish flannel trousers, which hung in a tattered fringe round his naked feet and ankles. ”

“ I think he said he'd have something like typhus, which is an entirely different disease; beastly infectious, for one thing, whereas the real typhoid, the thing that the name doesn't mean, if you understand me, isn't catching at all. Which just shows how much trust you can put in scientific names. No, Major, you take my word for; it, pliocene clay is some jolly hard kind of rock—igneous, I expect—and this island is pretty much as old Don What's-his-name found it when he scrambled on shore out of that galleon. ”

“ What they like is to get hold of a name which is sure to deceive plain, straightforward men like you and me, and then when we take it at its face value, put the obvious meaning on to one of their own words, they make us look like fools for not knowing any better. It's just the same with typhoid fever. ”

“ You back he's gone treasure-hunting on his own every fine day for the last fifty years, and now when he sees we're after it and going about the job in a jolly sight more intelligent way than ever he did, he thinks he's nothing to do but hang on to us till we find it, and then chip in and claim a share. ”

“ His face had a look of dignity, of a certain calm and satisfied superiority. Men of this kind are to be met with here and there among the Connacht peasantry. They are in reality children of a vanishing race, of a lost civilisation, a bygone culture. ”

“ Let's go on if you're bent on going."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Meldon, "if he had some kind of inkling of what we're after. Your great aunt said in her diary——"
"My grandfather. I never had a great aunt that I know of."
"Well, your grandfather. It's all the same. He said anyhow that the natives here knew about the treasure in this day. Now that's just the kind of information that would be handed down from father to son, and old T. O. P. is just the sort of man——"
"Who's T. O. P.?"
"T. O. P.? Oh, Thomas O'Flaherty Pat, of course. ”

“ Also they secured us this excellent crab, which I shall cook for supper to-night. And anyhow, they aren't lies. They are what is called diplomacy, and that's an art practised by the most honourable men—lords, and marquises, and kings, and people of that kind. Do you suppose that the Prime Minister, when he thinks he'll have to go to war with Germany, tells the literal truth? ”

“ Even nowadays, with all the improvements there are in things, there's hardly ever a nor'-east wind on this coast, and in those days—two hundred years and more ago—I expect the wind just shifted about through three points of the compass, nor'-west, west, and sou'-west. ”