They were pieces of eight!

Meanwhile, Tom had stopped jabbering, and had come nearer, looking on in awed silence.  I showed him the pieces of eight.

“I guess these are all we’ll see of one of John P. Tobias’s treasure, Tom,” I said.  “And it looks as if these poor fellows saw as little of it as ourselves.  Can’t you imagine them with it there at their feet—­perhaps playing to divide it on a gamble; and, meanwhile, the other fellows stealing in through some of these rabbit runs—­one with a knife, the other with a gun—­and then:  off with the loot and up with the sails.  Poor devils!  It strikes me as a very pretty tragedy—­doesn’t it you?”

Suddenly—­perhaps with the vibration of our voices—­the hat toppled off the head of the fellow facing us, in the most weird and comical fashion—­and that was too much for Tom, and he screamed and made for the exit hole.  But I waited a minute to replace the hat on the rakish one’s head.  As I was likely often to think of him in the future, I preferred to remember him as at the moment of our first strange acquaintance.

BOOK II

      The dotted cays,
      With their little trees,
    Lie all about on the crystal floor;
      Nothing but beauty—­
      Far off is duty,
    Far off the folk of the busy shore.

      The mangroves stride
      In the coloured tide,
    With leafy crests that will soon be isles;
      And all is lonely—­
      White sea-sand only,
    Angel-pure for untrodden miles.

      In sunny bays
      The young shark plays,
    Among the ripples and nets of light;
      And the conch-shell crawls
      Through the glimmering halls
    The coral builds for the Infinite.

      And every gem
      In His diadem,
    From flaming topaz to moon-hushed pearl,
      Glitters and glances
      In swaying dances
    Of waters adream like the eyes of a girl.

      The sea and the stars,
      And the ghostly bars
    Of the shoals all bright ’neath the feet of the moon;
      The night that glistens,
      And stops and listens
    To the half-heard beat of an endless tune.

      Here Solitude
      To itself doth brood,
    At the furthest verge of the reef-spilt foam;
      And the world’s lone ends
      Are met as friends,
    And the homeless heart is at last at home.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

Once More in John Saunders’s Snuggery.

Need I say that it was a great occasion when I was once more back safe in John Saunders’s snuggery, telling my story to my two friends, comfortably enfolded in a cloud of tobacco smoke, John with his old port at his elbow, and Charlie Webster and I flanked by our whiskies and soda, all just as if I had never stirred from my easy chair, instead of having spent an exciting month or so among sharks, dead men, blood-lapping ghosts, card-playing skeletons and such like?