When we were clear of the shadow of the barque’s side, I turned to look for Miss Temple, and observed her seated in a posture of utter despondency upon the skylight. I stood up and flourished my hat; but she made no sort of response. She remained motionless, as though stupefied and insensible. I resumed my seat, breathing hard with the wild mood that possessed me; but I was not to be suffered to sit in silence. The carpenter plied me with questions, which he only ceased that the others might have a chance of making inquiries. Couldn’t I remember how many paces it was that the captain had said? Would it be one hundred? Would it be two hundred? Would I turn to and think a bit? A gent’s eddicated memory was always better than plain men’s, who weren’t no scholards. If the right number of paces wasn’t hit upon, it might take ’em a week to find the spot. And what about the bearings? Couldn’t I recollect exactly how the trees bore from that there pillar? Wherever the gold was, it couldn’t lie deep hid, for there was but two men to bury it, and them weak with shipwreck, and they wasn’t going all the way down to hell to make sartin of a secret nook. To all this I had to listen and reply as I best could. Yet it was talk to put a fancy that had long haunted me—that had haunted me, I may say, from the time of some of my earliest conversations with the carpenter—into shape, out of which arose one instantly present keen perception: that gold or no gold, they must be kept hunting for it! It was a cloudless day; the sky a true Pacific blue, a mild breathing of wind off the island; and the sun, that was already at his meridian, flung a wide splendour upon the air that was without an insufferable excess of heat. The long-boat floated into the lagoon, the bottom of which showed like a pavement of white marble trembling through the blue, glass-like translucency. I looked carefully about me, but could see no signs of the hut which Captain Braine told me he had built, and out of which he had crawled to find the Yankee surveying craft hove-to abreast of the island. Neither were there any other relics of his shipwreck visible: such as the bottles, casks, tins, and so on, which, according to his account, he and his companion had landed from the brigantine. It is true that a good many years had elapsed since the date of the wreck as he had given it me, and in that time the island might have been visited or swept by seas and hurricanes. The sailors did not appear to heed the absence of all memorials of Captain Braine’s having landed here. ‘The Spanish craft’ll have come ashore yonder,’ said the carpenter, standing erect, referring to Braine’s story, and indicating by an eager nod of the head the position of the stretch of lustrous beach that looked northwards, but that was now invisible to us. ‘Where’ll be a good place to land here?’