Presently, above the impossibly blue sea loomed a bit of land, a tiny, gray-green, barren cay, rimmed with ragged, weather-beaten rocks in whose coves and hollows coral beaches gleamed, white as the beating surf, beyond the turquoise water. Leaning upon the schooner’s rail, I gazed idly and curiously at the little isle, the one break upon the shimmering sea, a lonely spot whose only signs of life were the circling sea-birds hovering over it in clouds. I turned to the fellow at the wheel—a giant of a man, black as ebony and muscled like a Hercules, naked to the waist, his dungaree trousers rolled to his knees and supported by a wisp of scarlet sash, his huge flat feet wide-spread, and a flapping jipijapa hat upon his huge head. His lusterless eyes, bloodshot from constant diving (for he was a sponger by profession), and the huge hoops in his ears, gave him a fierce, wild look, and, glancing at him, one might well have imagined him a member of a pirate crew, a corsair steering toward some doomed prize. “Sam,” I asked, “what’s that island over there to port?” The big negro slowly turned his head and gazed at the speck of rock and sand. “Tha’ ’s Dead Man’s Chest, Chief,” he replied in the soft drawl of the Bahaman. Dead Man’s Chest! Instantly, at his words, the song made famous by Stevenson flashed through my mind: “Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” Dead Man’s Chest! The little cay at once took on a new interest. Now I could almost picture them yonder,—those shipwrecked men, fifteen of them,—gaunt, fierce-visaged, unshorn; sprawled on the sand in the scanty shade of the twisted sea-grape trees above the surf. Marooned, cast away, but reckless daredevils to the last; gambling in the face of death, tossing a gleaming golden doubloon in their final game of chance—the stake, their lives against that one bottle of rum! And then drink and the devil would have done for them as for the rest, and only their whitening bones over which the sea-birds fought and screamed would remain to tell their grim tale. Dead Man’s Chest! What more fitting than that this bit of ocean-girt land should have been the first of the isles made famous by the buccaneers to greet my eyes, and what more appropriate than that I should have sighted it from the deck of a real pirate craft! Fortunate indeed had I been when her owners delivered the Vigilant into my hands for my cruise, and I pondered, as we sped past wave-beaten Dead Man’s Chest, on the story the Vigilant might tell could she but speak. Then my thoughts were brought back to the present as Sam spoke: “The’ says as how the’ ’s plenty o’ tr’asure yonder, on Dead Man’s Chest,” he remarked, “but Ah can’ say as how true ’tis, Chief. Plenty folks has s’arched for it, but Ah can’ say as the’ ’s foun’ it. I ’spec’ the’ ’s tr’asure a plenty on th’ cays here ’bout. The’ says as how th’ pirates was num’rous roun’ here.”