eerfully and
smoothing his gun-barrel. "And now I think we may rejoin the ladies
and pray that these rascals will put off disturbing us until after
luncheon. At one time I feared they might have taken a panic
yesterday morning at sight of your schooner; but they calculated,
maybe, that the chances were all against your discovering their
presence, which, of course, you never suspected."

"I suspected something fast enough," said Captain Branscome, "for in
running along the coast I caught sight of smoke rising among the
hills--from a camp-fire, as I reckoned--and no doubt from here or
hereabouts, though I should have put it a mile or two farther south."

"The born fools!" said Dr. Beau-regard, laughing. "Well, it's even
possible that in their furious preoccupation they let the schooner
come close without spying her. Ah, Captain, you can hardly imagine--
you, fresh from a civilized country, where folks must keep up
appearances, while they prey upon one another--how this lust of gold
brutalizes a man when, as here, he pursues it without restraint.
And what, after all, will gold purchase?"

"Not happiness, I verily believe," said the Captain, "though to the
poor--and I speak as one who has been bitterly poor--it may bring
happiness for a while in the shape of relief from grinding
discomfort."

"Yes, yes; as pleasure lies in mere cessation from pain. But that
does not meet my question. We will take Master Harry here, who seems
a good, ordinary healthy boy. We will suppose him in possession of
the treasure you are here to seek. What in the end can he purchase
with it better than the fun he is getting out of this expedition?
He can indulge all his senses, but for a while only; in the end
indulgence brings satiety, dulls the appetite, takes the savour from
the feast, and so destroys itself. He can purchase power, you say?
But that again moves one difficulty but a step further. For what
will his power give him when he has won it? These are questions,
Captain, which I have asked myself daily here on this island.
I have been asking them ever since, and while I was yet a young man
they came to wear for me a personal application. 'Vanity of
vanities,' Captain--what the Preacher discovered long ago I
discovered again and of my own experience."

"The Christian religion, sir--" began Captain Branscome. But here
our strange host laid a hand on his arm.

"We forget our politeness," he interrupted, yet gently, and with