Valentine Williams

“ I pleaded. “Let me keep a wonderful dream unspoiled, Marjorie. But dreams can't last forever, my dear. One has to wake up sometime, you know!”
Questioningly her eyes sought mine.
“Even if Sir Alexander had not told me I was not wanted on the Naomi I continued, “I think I should yet have parted from you here. My dear, my dear, don't you see it's hopeless? I care far too much for you to be able to know you merely as a friend. I must make an end of it. The barrier between us is insurmountable...” ”

“ They brought me some food in my cabin, and while, attired in a voluminous dressing-gown of my friend's, I ate, John Bard told me what he had learnt regarding the connection of El Cojo's gang with Cock Island.
“During the war,” he said, “the island was the dépôt for certain important gun-running operations carried out by Black Pablo and his friends for the Mexican insurgents. The idea of the scheme, which was directed by the German espionage heads in the United States, was to keep things humming on the American border and to detain United States troops there. ”

“ So we settled it. Bard arranged to send a boat ashore to fetch Clubfoot to the Cristobal. He promised to see to it that my enemy was safely bestowed.
So I turned my back on Cock Island and left it brooding sadly beneath the stars with the terraced rock and the image and the little bowl shaped clearing where von Hagel slept. I went on board the Cristobal and for a good half-hour, with a long “peg” within easy reach of my hand, lay and soaked the stiffness out of my bones in a boiling hot bath. John had volunteered, in the meantime, to send a boat over to the Naomi to fetch my luggage ”

“ If I'd found that cursed treasure, things might have been different. But now I've only to tell you I shall never forget that you paid me the greatest compliment a woman can pay a man... and to say good-bye... ”