m my buried treasure, to the possible
discovery of which the doubloon seemed to point, I was possessed with a
growing desire for another glimpse of those haunting eyes. They needed
not their association with the mysterious gold, they were magnetic
enough to draw any man, with even the rudiments of imagination, along
the path of the unknown. All the paths out of the little settlement were
paths into the unknown, and, day after day, I followed one or another
of them out into the wilderness, taking a gun with me, as an ostensible
excuse for any spying eye, and bringing back with me occasional bags of
the wild pigeons which were plentiful on the island.

One day I had thus wandered unusually far afield, and at nightfall found
myself still several miles from home, on a rocky path overhanging the
sea. The coast-line had been gradually mounting in a series of
precipitous headlands, at the foot of which the sea made a low booming
that suggested hidden caves. Looking over the edge in places, one could
see that it had hollowed out the porous rock well under the base of the
cliffs, and here and there fallen masses of boulder told of a gradual
encroachment which, in course of time, would topple down into the abyss
the precarious pathway on which I stood. Inland the usual level scrub
gave place to a stretch of wild forest, very dense, and composed of
trees of many varieties, loftier than was usual on the island.

There was no sign of habitation anywhere. It was a wild and lonely
place, and presently over its savage beauty stole the glamour of the
moon rising far over the sea. I sat down on a ledge of the cliffs, and
watched the moonlight grow in intensity, as the darkness of the woods
deepened behind me. It was a night full of witchcraft; a night on which
the stars, the moon, and the sea together seemed hinting at some
wonderful thing about to happen.

Far down in the clear water I could see the giant sea-fans waving in a
moony twilight, touched eerily in those glassy depths with sudden rays
of the spectral light; soft bowers of phosphorescence spread a secret
radiance about dimly branching coral groves. And, all the while, the
path of the moon over the sea was growing stronger--laying, it would
seem, an even firmer pathway of silver stretching to the very foot of
the cliff-side.

I am not given to quoting poetry, but involuntarily there came to my
mind some lines remembered from boyhood:

If on some balmy summer night