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Pitts, which was supposed to have taken place in May of 1688 in Port Royal. It was written not in Arabic, but in English using Arabic characters, as a sort of code-writing, and contained passages that would have been better suited to have been translated into Latin . . .”
    “Good grief!”
    “The tenor of the account would lead one to believe that the writer had been present, for it included a mix of veritable pornography and quite treasonous and conspiratorial assertions on the part of Governor Morgan—a plot to raid the colony’s treasury with the assistance of—er—Mistress Pitts and her men, though there was no mention of where the bullion so acquired was to have been bestowed, nor of course any indication of whether the plan proceeded to—er—consummation.”
    “Consummation indeed,” murmured Abigail, her eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline. “When was Port Royal destroyed?”
    “Sixteen ninety-two, m’am.”
    “And lies full-fathom five, with nobody to miss the pilfered gold. How long did it take you to translate this remarkable document?”
    “About three hours, Aunt Abigail. Mrs. Lake read it through without so much as a blush, and by her expression seemed most vexed that it had nothing to say about the whereabouts of the treasure . . . She asked me, two or three times, if I had translated it all, and I swore to her that I had. In the end she brought me a cup of coffee and some bread and meat, and went to summon her coachman, it being quite dark by then. I will say I was extremely hungry and rather vexed that all I might eat was a little bit of the meat, which is poisonous to my digestion but which would not bring on a migraine like the bread would. And coffee, I believe, is a pernicious drink, not suited to human consumption, so I poured it out after a few sips. To this abstention—for being of dyspeptic habit I depend upon regular meals—and to the exhaustion of concentration, I attributed the sleepiness that overwhelmed me. Mrs. Lake and her coachman had to assist me into the chaise, and I so misliked the man’s appearance that I struggled to remain awake and to observe if I could the countryside we traversed.”
    Abigail did a moment’s mental calculation. “With no moon that night you’re fortunate he didn’t have you in the ditch.”
    “Yes, m’am. Yet I found the countryside wholly unfamiliar, as one does by starlight, and despite the fact that I was shivering violently, I kept nodding off. At last I woke to find the chaise standing still in what appeared to be a stand of woods. I called out to the coachman and had no reply. I tried to open the door of the chaise and for some reason could not—it was very dark within, since we were in the woods, and in my befuddled state I couldn’t find the door handle. At last, convinced that something terrible was about to happen, I used my Arabic lexicon to break the window-glass and put my hand through to open the door from the outside—”
    “Reasoning that Mrs. Lake could scarcely have you up for vandalism if her coachman had abandoned you in the wilderness ?”
    The young man’s black eyebrows pulled together behind those thick lenses. “Aunt Abigail, at that point I know not what I was thinking. I staggered when I came down from the chaise, and it seemed to me that I could hear someone or something approaching me through the woods. It came to me, I know not why, that the whole of the events of the evening might have been orchestrated by one of the senior classmen—’tis precisely the sort of thing Black Dog Pugh likes to do—for my discomfiture . . . An’ ’twere not that, I had not liked the coachman’s face nor his mien. It may seem cowardly of me,” he added in a stifled voice, “and foolish, too, but I fled into the woods.”
    His long, slender fingers toyed with the corn-bread on the plate; he was caught between the shame of being teased the whole of his short life and the memory of very genuine terror.
    “Have you any