This secret conversation between Joe and myself--secret by reason of the intense darkness of the night, and by the precautions I had deemed it expedient to take, at an early stage of the conversation, to conceal my precise whereabouts from any prying eyes among the starboard watch--at first produced within me a feeling of the keenest uneasiness and anxiety. For Joe's revelation as to the discovery by the late steward of my secret relating to the concealed treasure furnished me with what had previously been lacking, namely, _a motive_ for that secret plotting of the existence of which Joe was so firmly convinced. The story to which I had that night listened left no room for doubt in my mind that my own want of caution and the late steward's inquisitive propensities had placed within the knowledge of the latter the two important facts that I possessed the secret of a concealed treasure, and that it was my intention, on leaving Sydney, to proceed in search of it. Moreover, it was clear enough that the fellow had no sooner acquired this knowledge than he concocted a plan for the eventual acquisition of the treasure, and made some effort to secure the assistance of the crew in the carrying out of this plan, whatever it might happen to have been. Failing in this, might he not, out of sheer malice, have communicated the secret to some one else--our present cook, for instance--and instigated the man to take some such steps as himself had contemplated? Such a proceeding would at once account satisfactorily for the curious fact that I had succeeded in obtaining a crew when no other shipmaster within the port could do so. The only weak element of such a supposition consisted in my inability to reconcile myself to the belief that such a man as our late steward would ever, under any provocation, be weak enough to part with a secret that might, even under the most unlikely combination of circumstances and in the most distant future, possibly be of some advantage to himself. Yet this man, Martin, whose life I had saved, and who had impressed me as being a thoroughly honest, straightforward, trustworthy fellow, roundly asserted that something of a secret and mysterious character was going on among the newly shipped men--something from which he, on account of his assumed integrity, had been quietly yet consistently excluded; and he had heard the word "treasure" mentioned by these presumable conspirators. Then I argued with myself that, after all, when one came to reflect upon it, the exclusive ways of these ex-gold-miners and the mere mention of the word "treasure" seemed rather slender threads from which to weave so portentous a suspicion as that which Joe's communication had suggested. For aught that I knew, the late steward's discourses upon the subject of the treasure might have been of such a character as to suggest to the minds of his hearers an absurdly exaggerated idea of its value, leaving