you?" I cried; and seeing that he was not like to answer, repeated the
question--"Where is the box I gave you?"

By way of reply Mr. White fumbled for a moment or two in his
waistcoat-pocket, and presently handed me a scrap of paper. I opened it,
and tried to read, though my hand trembled so that I could hardly
contrive to make out what it was. But in spite of that, and the blurring
of my eyesight, every word and every letter is stamped upon my memory as
upon a plate of brass.

It was written as though in mine own handwriting, and very hastily
scrawled, but so like that I could not have told it myself had I not
known it to be a forgery.

These were the words:

"_Sir,--I have altered my mind in regard to the box. Please deliver it
to the bearer (Captain Leach), who will take present charge of it, and
will convey it to me._

"John Mackra."

As I still held the letter in my hand, gazing stupidly at it, but seeing
nothing, the whole villany of the business was, as it were, revealed to
me. I saw that when Captain Leach had left the ship in the native canoe
two nights ago he had come straight to the pirates and had made some
bargain with them for that accursed Rose of Paradise; that when he had
gone aboard the _Greenwich_ and the Ostender the next day, it was not to
secure a passage for himself, but rather to persuade them to sacrifice
the _Cassandra_, and so save their own wretched hulks; that when he had
sent me to the women in the great cabin it was to get rid of me so that
he might tamper with Mr. White; and last of all, that he had kept this
forged letter about him for just such an occasion as this. Then I
thought of my shipmates killed and wounded, of my vessel and cargo lost,
of all these poor people outcasts upon this savage, desert coast, with
no present prospect or hope of help, and of the stone itself thus
cheated out of my hands at the last moment, and after all the suffering
and the blood that had been shed. There came a great roaring in mine
ears, all things began to reel before my sight, a dark cloud seemed to
encompass me, and then I knew nothing more.

X.

After I had thus swooned away, which happened both from the fever of my
wound and the loss of blood, there followed a long time during which
everything was confused and dream-like. I may call to mind what seemed
to me a great and toilsome journey, but so commingled with the visions
of my fe