I was about to go below again, when my eye was taken by the two figures lying upon the deck. No dead bodies ever looked more dead, but after the wondrous restoration of the Frenchman I could not view their forms without fancying that they were but as he had been, and that if they were carried to the furnace and treated with brandy and rubbing and the like they might be brought to. Full of thoughts concerning them I stepped into the cabin, and, going to the cook-room, found Tassard still heavily sleeping. The coal in the corner was low, and as it wanted an hour of dinner-time I took the lanthorn and a bucket and went into the forepeak, and after several journeys stocked up a good provision of coal in the corner. I made noise enough, but Tassard slept on. When this was ended I boiled some water to cleanse myself, and then set about getting the dinner ready. The going into the forepeak had put my mind upon the treasure, which, as I had gathered from the Frenchman's narrative, was somewhere hidden in the schooner--in the run, as I doubted not; I mean in the hold, under the lazarette, for you will recollect that, being weary and half-perished with the cold, I had turned my back on that dark part after having looked into the powder-room. All the time I was fetching the coal and dressing the dinner my imagination was on fire with fancies of the treasure in this ship. The Frenchman had told me that they had been well enough pleased with their hauls in the South Sea to resolve them upon heading round the Horn for their haunt, wherever it might be, in the Spanish main; and I had too good an understanding of the character of pirates to believe that they would have quitted a rich hunting-field before they had handsomely lined their pockets. What, then, was the treasure in the run, if indeed it were there? I recalled a dozen stories of the doings of the buccaneers, not to speak of the famous Acapulco ship taken by Anson a little before the year in which the _Boca del Dragon_ was fishing in those waters; and I feasted my fancy with all sorts of sparkling dreams of gold and silver and precious stones, of the costly ecclesiastical furniture of New Spain, of which methought I found a hint in that silver crucifix in the cabin, of rings, sword-hilts, watches, buckles, snuff-boxes, and the like. Lord! thought I, that this island were of good honest mother earth instead of ice, that we might bury the pirate's booty if we could not save the ship, and make a princely mine of its grave, ready for the mattock should we survive to fetch it! I was mechanically stirring the saucepan full of broth I had prepared, lost in these golden thoughts, when the Frenchman suddenly sat up on his mattress.