He nodded. "No, I reckon you never did. Fresh as paint it keeps 'em, and white as a figure-head. The first heap as ever I dug, believin' it to be the treasure--my reckoning was out by a foot or two--I came on one o' them. Three foot beneath the sand I came on him, an' the gulls sheevoing all the while over my head. _They_ knew. And the sea and the dreadful loneliness around us all the while. There was three of us, Brooks--I mention no names, you understand--three of us, and _him_. Three to one. Yet he got the better of us all--as he got the better of the first lot, and _they_ must ha' been a dozen. Four of them we uncovered afore we struck the edge of the treasure--uncovered 'em and covered 'em up again pretty quick, I can tell you. Fresh as paint they were, in a manner o' speaking, just as though they'd died yesterday; whereas by Bill's account they must ha' lain there for more'n a year. And the faces on 'em white and shinin'--" Here Captain Coffin shivered, and, glancing about him, poured out another go of rum. "You wouldn't blame me for wantin' it, Brooks--not if you'd seen 'em. That was on the Keys, as they're called--half a dozen banks to no'thard of the island, and maybe from half a mile to three-quarters off the shore, which shoals thereabout--sand, all the lot of 'em, and nothin' but sand; sand and sea-birds, and--what I told you. But the bulk lies in the island itself, in two caches; and where the bigger cache lies _he_ don't know, and nobody knows but only Dan Coffin." Captain Coffin winked, touched his breast, and wagged his forefinger at me impressively. "That makes twice," he went on. "Twice that devil has got the better of every one. But the third time's lucky, they say. He may be dead afore this; he'll be getting an oldish man, anyway, and life on that cursed island can't be good for his health. We won't go in a crowd this time, neither; not a dozen, nor yet four of us, but only you an' me, Brooks. It's the safer way--the only safe way--an' there'll be the fatter sharin's. Now you know--hey?--why Branscome's givin' me lessons in navigation." He chuckled, and was moving off mysteriously to a back doorway behind the dresser, but halted and came back to the table beside which I stood, making no motion to follow him.