"The first thing to be done," he thought to himself, as he splashed about in his bath after that five hours' sleep--which was enough for him, since it was more than a watch below--"is to get a promise from the first Sea Lord, on the ground of 'urgent private affairs,' that I shall not be called upon to serve for another year. If I can manage that, then off I go to Coffin Island and dear old Nick's treasure. Lord bless me! how I would like to have known Nick--as Phips called him." There had come into the young man's heart as he read that paper a feeling which, I suppose, often comes into the hearts of most of us who have ever had ancestors--the feeling that we would like to have known them, to have seen them and to have shaken hands with them, observed the quaint garb they wore, and listened to their quaint speech. So it was now with Reginald. He would have liked to have heard Nicholas tell the story instead of having read it, would like to have stood by his side when he fought the _Etoyle_, to have been by him when the drunken and delirious pirate died singing his song, to have accompanied him on that solitary voyage when he kept--good honest man!--a cheerful heart and trusted to his God alone to watch over him. "I wonder whose treasure it was that he found?" the young man meditated--"not Alderly's, at any rate. The pirates never buried their treasure, though the story-books say they did, but rather took it with them to their favourite haunts to spend in a debauch. Even Alderly was doing that at the time Nicholas captured him; he had his box with him, full of ready money for spending purposes. And those others, those antique coins, those jewels and precious things, what were they? Buried, perhaps, by some French refugee who had been cast away on Coffin Island and found by Alderly, or stolen from some French treasure ship by an earlier pirate than Alderly, yet still found by him. Shall I ever know?" But, whether he would ever know or not was a matter of very small importance to Reginald Crafer, in comparison with the fact that he was going to find them again himself, if he possibly could. For that they should not lie any longer in the middle Key above Coffin Island than it would take him to go and fetch them, he was very firmly resolved. "The Key isn't likely to have shifted," he reflected, "nor to have become entirely covered by the sea for good and all. And if it has, why, science has advanced a bit since the days of Nicholas, and we will have it out. The treasure has been found twice as it has been buried twice--once by its original owner, as I believe, and once by Nicholas; I'll make the third finder. There's luck in odd numbers!" and remembering his Latin, of which he had a better knowledge than his sailor relative had had, he murmured, "_Numero deus impare gaudet!_"