Got the chest aboard the Island Queen and stowed in the cabin.  Not room left to swing a kitten.  Contrived an elaborate arrangement of ropes and spikes to keep it in place in a heavy sea.

In the afternoon began moving the gold.  It’s the deuce of a job.

February 15.  Been hard at it for three days.  Most of the gold moved.  Have to think too of provisions and water for the trip.  I am making rather a liberal allowance, in case of being blown out of my course by a tropical gale.

February 16.  On board the Island Queen.  Have moved my traps from the hut and am sleeping on the sloop.  Want to be near the gold.  “Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also,” and in this case the body as well.  To-morrow I have only to bring the last of the gold aboard—­a trifling matter—­and then go out with the ebb.  I would have got all the bags on board to-day, but I noticed a worn stretch in the cable holding the sloop and stopped to repair it.  I can’t have the sloop going on the rocks in case a blow comes up to-night.  There are only about a load and a half of bags left in the cave.

A queer notion seized me to-day about the crucifix, when I was bringing it from the cave.  It seemed to float into my brain—­I can’t say from what quarter—­that I had better leave the crucifix for Bill.  It wasn’t more than he had a right to, really—­and there is no virtue in a cross-bones to make a man sleep well.

Of course I put the absurd idea from me, and brought the crucifix aboard along with the rest of the gold.  I shall be glad when I know that the vines have again covered that lonely-looking gravestone from sight.  I can’t help feeling my own glorious good fortune to be somehow an affront to poor unlucky Bill.

To-morrow one last trip to the cave, and then hey, for home and Helen!

The diary ended here.

I closed the book, and stared with unseeing eyes into the green shadows of the encompassing woods.  What happened to the writer of the diary on that last trip to the cave?  For he had never left the island.  Crusoe was here to prove it, as well as the wreck of the Island Queen.  And, in all human probability, under the sand which choked the cabin of the derelict was the long-sought chest of Spanish doubloons.

But what was the mysterious fate of Peter?  Had he fallen, overboard from the sloop and been drowned?  Had he returned to the cave—­and was he there still?  It was all a mystery—­but a mystery which I burned to solve.

Of course I might have solved it, very quickly, merely by communicating the extraordinary knowledge which had come to me to my companions.  But for the present at least I meant to keep this astounding secret for my own.  Somehow or other, by guile or lucky circumstance, I must bring it about that the document I had signed at Miss Browne’s behest was canceled.  Was I, who all unaided had discovered, or as good