act of rising from the waves off the north-western coast, the equally impossible ship, decorated with a sprit-top-mast and a flag upon it, and charging up under full sail for the southern entry, the name of which ("Gow’s Gulf”) I must have missed to read in the short perusal Captain Coffin had allowed me.  At any rate, I could not recall it.  But I recalled the three crosses which showed (so he had told me) where the treasure lay.  They were marked in red ink, and I explained their meaning to Miss Belcher, who had pounced upon them at once.

“Fiddlestick-end!” said that lady, falling back on her favourite ejaculation.  “Great clumsy crosses of that size!  How in the world could any one find a treasure by such marks, unless it happened to be two miles long?”

She pointed to the scale at the head of the chart, which, to be sure, gave six miles to the inch.  By the same measurement the crosses covered, each way, from half a mile to three-quarters.  Moreover, each had patently been dashed in with two hurried strokes of the pen and without any pretence of accuracy.  The first cross covered a “key” or sand-bank off the northern shore of the island; the second sprawled athwart what appeared to be the second height in a range of hills running southward from Cape Alderman, and down along the entire eastern coast at a mean distance of a mile, or a little over, from the sea; while the third was planted full across a grove of trees at the head of the great inlet—­Gow’s Gulf—­to the south, and, moreover, spanned the chief river of the island, which, running almost due south from the back of the hills or mountains (their size was not indicated) below Cape Alderman, discharged itself into the apex of the gulf.

“Without bearings of some sort,” said Miss Belcher, “these marks are merely ridiculous.”

“You may well say so, ma’am,” Captain Branscome answered, but inattentively.  “Mortallone—­Mortallone,” he went on, muttering the word over as if to himself.  “It is curious, all the same.”

“What is curious?” demanded Miss Belcher.

“Why, ma’am, I have never myself visited the Gulf of Honduras, but among seamen there are always a hundred stories floating about.  In a manner of speaking, there is no such shop for gossip as the sea.  In every port you meet ’em, in taverns where sailors drink and brag—­ the liquor being in them—­and one man talks and the rest listen, not troubling themselves to believe.  It is good to find one’s self ashore, you understand?  And a good, strong-flavoured yarn makes the landlord and all the shore-keeping folk open their eyes—­”

“Bless the man!” Miss Belcher rapped her knuckles on the table.  “This is not a ’longshore tavern.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then why not come to the point?”

“The point, ma’am—­well, the point is that every one—­that is to say, every seaman—­has heard tell of treasure knocking about, as you might put it, somewhere in the Gulf of Honduras.”