The storm was ceasing as he went forth, the clouds were rolling away to the south; around him there were the odours of all the tropical flowers, their perfume increased threefold by the rain. He knew the path so well now from having traversed it many times backwards and forwards from the _Pompeia_, that it took him very little time even in the dark to reach the bank of the river, to unmoor the dinghy, and to get on board the craft. Then, lighting his pipe, he sat himself down in his little cabin to meditate on what this fresh incident--the arrival of Joseph Alderly--might mean. "I should know better what to think," he mused, "if I only knew how long he had been behind the blind. The brute may have been there for sufficient time to have heard all the last instructions of old Nicholas about finding the treasure which I read out. Or he may have heard only enough to give him an inkling that I know where the treasure is. Let me see," and he put his hand in his pocket and drew forth his forerunner's narrative. "Yes," he muttered, as he turned over the leaves, "yes, I had got far enough--having reached the rescue of Nicholas by the _Virgin Prize_--for him to have heard all if he was there. If he was there; that's it. Only--was he? or did he come later when there was nothing more to be overheard than the description of Nicholas leaving the island?" Again he pondered, turning the arrival of Alderly over in his mind, and then he remembered how the jalousies had rattled at a time when the wind had lulled, though he had taken little heed of the fact beyond glancing up from the papers. Yet, as he racked his mind to recall what they had been saying, or he reading, at the moment, he remembered the words he had uttered-- "There is nothing to tell you now but the burying of the treasure in the spot where it lies and where we will dig it up." These had been his words, or very similar ones. If Alderly had been there then--if he had arrived on the verandah by the time they were uttered--he knew all. He had heard the middle Key mentioned, he had heard how the measurements were to be taken, he knew as much as Reginald and Barbara knew. But--had he been there? was it his hand that shook the blind, or was it some light gust of air, a last breath of the storm? That was the question. Still, independent of this--indeed, far beyond the thought of the treasure, which he had definitely decided he would take no portion of, since it was not, could not be, his by any right--his mind was troubled. Troubled about Barbara and her being alone with the savage creature who was her brother--"Heavens!" he thought, "that they should be the same flesh and blood!"--troubled to think of what form his brutality might take towards her if he suspected that she knew where all the long-sought wealth was hidden away.