I turned to look at Pauline. She was deathly white; evidently frightened at being made the vehicle of this message from the beyond. Her mother clutched at her, as though protecting her from unseen dangers. Geoffrey’s imagination had caught fire, his eyes were bright with excitement. “My sakes! Pauline!” he cried. “I believe you now! You couldn’t have written that out of your head. I’ve read of things like this before--I guess you’re a medium and didn’t know it!--Father! We’ll track this message down, wherever it comes from, say now?” “It comes from the Devil! Tear it up--oh, tear it up!” implored Mrs. Vandermeulen. “William! Tear it up--don’t follow it!” Old Vandermeulen turned to the skipper. His jaw had set hard, his lips were compressed, only the glitter in his eyes, peering in a momentary fixation of thought from under his bent brows, showed that he shared the excitement of his son. So he must have looked in his office when he took the decisions which had made his millions. “Captain Higgins,” he said, curtly ignoring the supplications of his wife, “how long will it take us to reach that island?” The skipper put his finger on the chart at a point south of Haiti. “We’re here,” he said. He measured off the distance. “At our best rate of twelve knots--about sixty hours steaming.” The old man nodded. “Put her about,” he said. His harsh tone had an odd ring about it, as though he was secretly conscious of affronting mysterious dangers, was all the more emphatic. “Right now!” Captain Higgins never queried owners’ orders. “Very good, sir,” he replied, stolidly, and walked out of the cabin. A minute or two later we felt the yacht swing round. There is always something impressive when a ship on the open sea goes about upon her course, but I never felt it more powerfully than then. It seemed that there was a fateful significance in our deliberate action. Geoffrey meanwhile was poring over the sheet of paper on which he had transcribed his sister’s reversed scrawl. “It’s all perfectly clear,” he said, triumphantly. “We’ve got to make this island of Santa Katalina, thirteen-twenty-four North, eighty-one twenty-seven West, try and find a place called Skull Point, look for three trees south-west-by-south of it, and dig! We understand every word of it now!” “All except the word ‘_lucia_’” I corrected, “and whose turn it is.” “Yes--there’s that,” he said, dubiously. “I suppose every word has some meaning.” “You can bet it has!” I replied, half sarcastically humouring his credulity, half surrendering myself to an uncritical acception of these mysteriously given directions. “I wonder who this John Dawson was--if he existed?” “He’s a sure-enough ghost of some old pirate!” said Vandermeulen, with complete conviction. “And I guess he’s putting us fair and good on to his pile!” I laughed, involuntarily, at this childishness. The old man frowned.