"Very well, if you will," he answered. "And, at any rate, the worst is told. There is nothing more to shock or affright you. Nothing but the burying of the treasure in the spot where it now lies, and where we will dig it up." The jalousies rattled as he spoke--yet at this moment the wind had ceased, and nought was heard but the steady downpour of the rain. But, perhaps because of the incessant noise the storm had made for some hours, neither of them noticed this peculiar incident, though Reginald glanced up as the blind stirred. Then he began again, reading on through Nicholas's strange story, and doing so with particular emphasis, so that she might grasp every word of his description as he told how the measurements were to be taken in the middle Key. And Barbara sat there listening silently. Yet, as he turned a leaf--having now got to that part of the account where Nicholas was picked up by the _Virgin Prize_--he paused in astonishment at the appearance of her face. For she was gazing straight before her at the jalousie, her eyes opened to their widest, her features drawn as though in fright, her face almost distorted. "Look! Look!" she gasped. "Look at the blind." And he, following her glance, was for the moment appalled too. A large hand was grasping half-a-dozen of the slats in its clutch; between those slats a pair of human eyes were twinkling as they peered into the room. As Reginald rose to rush at the intruder, whoever he was, Barbara gave another gasp and fell back fainting into her chair; and then, before her companion could ask the owner of those eyes what he meant by his intrusion, the blinds were roughly thrust aside, and, following this, there came a man of great size, from whom the water dripped as from a dog who had just quitted a river--a man whose face was all bruised and discoloured as though he had been badly beaten. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE ISLAND'S OWNER. "Who are you, and what do you want?" asked Reginald, confronting the intruder; while, as he spoke, he observed that the coarse and scanty clothes in which he was clad were drenched with more water than even the heavens could have poured on him. He was a man of great bulk, young as himself, and with a mass of reddish-yellow hair that hung about his face, matted and dishevelled from the wet in which it was soaked; and as he advanced into the room the water dripped off him on to the floor. "Want!" he replied, "want! What should a man want in his own house but rest and comfort after a storm? Master, this is my house! I had best ask what you want here? And at night--alone with my sister." Yet he did not pause for an answer, but going up to where that sister lay back in the swoon that had overcome her, he shook her roughly by the shoulder and called out-- "Come, get over your fit. I have bad news for you."