"You see, Tommy, he had left them alone there to die; and that was a terrible thing." His voice was hushed and tense in a way I can't describe, but which held me in a spell of expectation. "And he knew they could never get away. And they had no food, and they would starve. And that's a horrible slow death, Tommy. And if they cried out, no one would hear them. Their voices would be like whispers from the stars." "Ah," I said, "the treasure," trying to link on to the lost fragment without my father's needing to repeat it, for I knew he hated to return upon his narrative when once well under way. I can see now how necessary it was for him to live in his incident, and repetition spoilt his dramatic flow. So there we sat together, gazing into the red flames, with the night outside very hushed and secret, far away from the world, with somewhere behind us our baffled pursuer scenting along a false track, and my father in his tense and vivid voice telling an old story of crime and madness and remorse. "Yes, treasure, Tommy," he answered me. "They were there with the gold and the rubies and the diamonds, trapped in the cave, with twenty tons of rock at its mouth, and with nothing to eat, and hunger gnawing like wolves inside them, and no one to hear them crying day after day; and their voices growing weaker and dryer, just like croaking birds, Tommy, till one by one they dropped down to die. It must have been terrible all alone there, Tommy. Can't you see them, with bruised torn hands, beating at the rock, tugging and beating? And the gold lying quiet there, how it must have said to them, 'Fools! Fools! Fools!' And the last man, Tommy, when the rest were all dead! I think he must have gone mad. Can you see him, groping from body to body, and crying pitifully because they wouldn't move or speak to him; all lying so sad and still and saying not a word? And how he must have sprung away from them and hammered at that rock, and fallen down faint and beaten, and wrung his battered hands, laughing like a madman, pulling at his hair. The last man, all alone, with the treasure and the secret and the dead men; till he grew thin and faint and tired, and lay down with the rest." "And the Mad Captain?" I asked, thirsting for details.