One thing alone troubled me, and that was food--or rather bread, for this was now running very short. If I did not get away soon, I should have to do without it altogether, or go seek for some in Negada and Tortola. Yet neither, I was resolved, would I do this, but rather exist without bread at all. I was a sailor, I ever told myself, and a sailor should be able to endure all hardships. But on the twenty-second day since I buried my spoils, a change came. I was sleeping in the cabin of my galliot, when with the dawn I perceived it. The northwest wind from which I had been sheltered in my cove had never disturbed the vessel; now from her starboard side, which was to the south as she lay, there blew in a hot southern wind, waves and riplets came into the cove from that direction and lapped against her bows, and she began gently to rise and fall and heel over a little from them, as though she were a living thing, impatient to be off. "'Tis come," I exclaimed, springing up. "The hour has come to bid farewell to this spot. If this wind hold forty-eight hours I shall be at the Inaguas if I find not Phips at the reef." The morn was not yet however, but was anigh as I stepped to the deck; the breeze sweeping up from the long line of islands to the south was a-freshening; the stars began to pale, the new moon to wane. No time could have been better for me than this quiet period before the dawn to steal away. In half an hour I was well outside the cove, the masts stepped, the sails set--and I at the helm had set forth upon my road home. 'Twas a strange voyage for one alone to undertake--had there been another, or even a boy, to relieve me 'twould have been nought; but now 'twas a voyage without a compass or aught to guide me, nothing indeed to help me but the mercy of heaven, my knowledge of the sea, and my strong frame and good health. However, we slipped round Coffin Island a little later, and I saw for the last time the spot that held the buried treasure. The little Key was visible beneath the now rising sun, the sea-birds were wheeling round and about it, and the blue water rippled on its shores. And so I took farewell of it, knowing that I should never see it any more. May you, whomsoever you may be for whom I write this narrative, find it as I left it, unharmed and untouched. May your eyes gaze upon it and find therein what I left behind when mine have long been closed in death. And now I had nought to do but steer my bark for that easterly point of Hispaniola called of late Cape Françoy, and so I should come near to the reef, and this, since the wind was very good and not boisterous, 'twas easy enough to do. When I was weary I would lower down the sails, lash the rudder, and so take some rest--doing this, of course, by day only, since when the night came I must keep good watch--and then set sail again when refreshed, finding my course easy enough by the sun and breeze.