‘We agreed to bury the gold,’ he said; ‘to hide it somewhere where we should be easily able to find it when we came to look for it, if so be as providence should ever allow us to come off with our lives from this destitute reef. D’ye see this hollow, Mr. Dugdale?’ ‘A lagoon, I suppose?’ said I. ‘Yes. This here mark amidships of it’—he turned his dead black eyes upon the chart—‘signifies a coral pillar about twice as thick as my mainmast, rising out of the water to about fourteen foot. We reckoned that there was no force in nature outside an airthquake to level such a shaft as that, and Mr. Ruddiman and me took it for a mark. We landed the brigantine’s compass, and having hit on a clump of trees, found they bore east three-quarters south from that there coral pillar. We fixed upon a tree, and after trying again and again, made it exactly two hundred and eight paces from the wash of the water in the curve of the lagoon. There we buried the money, sir.’ ‘And there it is now, I suppose?’ said I. ‘Hard upon two hundred thousand pounds,’ he exclaimed, letting the words drop from his lips as though they were of lead. ‘Think of it, sir.’ He folded up the sheet of parchment, always with a very trembling hand, replaced it in the drawer, which he locked; and then, after steadfastly gazing at me for some little while, an expression of energy entered his face, and he seemed to quicken from his eyes to his very toes. ‘All that money is mine,’ said he, ‘and I want you to help me recover it.’ ‘I!’ ‘Yes, you, Mr. Dugdale. You and me’ll do it between us. And I’ll tell ye how, if you’ll listen’—— ‘But, my dear sir,’ I exclaimed, ‘I suppose you recollect that you are under a solemn promise to Miss Temple and myself to transfer us to the first homeward-bound ship we meet.’ ‘I can’t help that,’ he cried with a hint of ferocity in his manner. ‘There’s this here fortune to be recovered first. After we’ve got it, home won’t be fur off.’ Come, thought I, I must be cool and apparently careless. ‘It is very good of you, Captain Braine, to wish me to participate in this treasure; but really, my dear sir, I have no title to any portion of it; besides, I am a man of independent means, and what I possess is quite as much as I require.’ ‘Ye’ll not refuse it when ye see it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Money’s money; and in this here world, where money signifies everything,—love, happiness, pleasure, everything you can name—who’s the man that’s agoing to tell me he can get too much of it?’ ‘But you haven’t completed your story,’ said I, strenuously endeavouring to look as though I believed in every word of the mad trash he had been communicating.