Accordingly, when the boat grounded upon the beach, I ordered everybody out of her, with the picks and shovels, and set all hands to work cutting pegs and long slender rods, under the direction of the boatswain, retaining Forbes and San Domingo, the negro, as assistants in my own especial part of the work. Within ten minutes, the fellows had cut all the pegs and rods I could possibly require; and then, looking carefully and anxiously about me, I at length fixed a stout peg, with the nicest accuracy, in the sand at its junction with the grass, and exactly at the edge of the stream. Then I sent men here and there with long wands, which I made them hold exactly perpendicular on the ground, adjusting their positions with the most finicking precision, until I had wrought them all firmly into the belief that the whole of this labour was gone through for the purpose of finding the exact spot where the treasure lay buried. Finally, I set out by compass, and indicated, by means of two long slender rods stuck upright into the sand, a line that would take them straight into the bush where it was thickest and most impenetrable, and told them to cut a straight line in that direction, exactly two thousand yards in length from a peg which I had driven at the margin of the bush. This task I entrusted to Rogers and the six other men, who struck me as being the blackest sheep of the flock; while, with Forbes, Joe Martin, Barr, Mckinley, Christianssen, and San Domingo, I took the boat, with a sufficient supply of axes and shovels, and made the best of my way to the southern side of the small islet upon which the treasure was said to be hidden. Upon our arrival at the desired spot, my impression of the preceding evening that it was entirely overgrown was fully confirmed, it proving to be literally impossible to find a place where a landing could be effected without first clearing away the scrub. There was this difference, however, between the growth on the islet and that at the spot where I had left the boatswain and his party at work, that whereas the latter consisted almost exclusively of huge trees, the former was composed largely of scrub, with only a few trees here and there, so that it would not be nearly so difficult to penetrate as the other. It was evident indeed to me at a glance, now that I had the full light of day to aid me in my inspection, that the growth upon the islet was of much more recent date than that upon any part of the main island in sight from that spot; a fact which tended to confirm my previous suspicion that at the time of the burial of the treasure the soil of the islet had been bare, or nearly so, of arboreal growth. The growth, however, was there now, and it constituted a very formidable difficulty, for how was I to identify a point exactly one thousand feet south of the obelisk rock, unless I could move freely over the ground for the purpose of obtaining my precise bearing and distance?