“I wish you would show me, yourself, the precise places on the chart, where them islands are to be found.  There is nothing like seeing a thing with one’s own eyes.”

“You forget my oath, deacon Pratt.  Every man on us took his bible oath not to point out the position of the islands, until a’ter the year 1820.  Then, each and all on us is at liberty to do as he pleases.  But, the chart is in my chest, and not only the islands, but the key, is so plainly laid down, that any mariner could find ’em.  With that chest, however, I cannot part so long as I live.  Get me well, and I will sail in the Sea Lion, and tell your captain Gar’ner all he will have occasion to know.  The man’s fortune will be made who first gets to either of them places.”

“Yes, I can imagine that, easy enough, from your accounts, Daggett—­but, how am I to be certain that some other vessel will not get the start of me?”

“Because the secret is now my own.  There was but seven on us, in that brig, all told.  Of them seven, four died at the islands of the fever, homeward bound; and of the other three, the captain was drowned in the squall I told you of, when he was washed overboard.  That left only Jack Thompson and me; and Jack, I think, must be the very man whose death I see’d, six months since, as being killed by a whale on the False Banks.”

“Jack Thompson is so common a name, a body never knows.  Besides, if he was killed by that whale, he may have told the secret to a dozen before the accident.”

“There’s his oath ag’in it.  Jack was sworn, as well as all on us, and he was a man likely to stand by what he swore to.  This was none of your custom-house oaths, of which a chap might take a dozen of a morning, and all should be false; but it was an oath that put a seaman on his honour, since it was a good-fellowship affair, all round.”

Deacon Pratt did not tell Daggett that Thompson might have as good reasons for disregarding the oath as he had himself; but he thought it.  These are things that no wise man utters on such occasions; and this opinion touching the equality of the obligation of that oath was one of them.

“There is another hold upon Jack,” continued Daggrett, after reflecting a moment.  “He never could make any fist of latitude and longitude at all, and he kept no journal.  Now, should he get it wrong, he and his friends might hunt a year without finding either of the places.”

“You think there was no mistake in the pirate’s account of that key, and of the buried treasure?” asked the deacon, anxiously.

“I would swear to the truth of what he said, as freely as if I had seen the box myself.  They was necessitated, as you may suppose, or they never would have left so much gold, in sich an uninhabited place; but leave it they did, on the word of a dying man.”

“Dying?—­You mean the pirate, I suppose?”