m, poor devil!"

It certainly was.

Then at last I said, surely not overgraciously: "Very well. Get aboard.
You can help work the boat"; and with that I turned away to my cabin.

CHAPTER IV

_In Which Tom Catches an Enchanted Fish, and Discourses of the Dangers
of Treasure Hunting._

The morning was a little overcast, but a brisk northeast wind soon set
the clouds moving as it went humming in our sails, and the sun, coming
out in its glory over the crystalline waters, made a fine flashing world
of it, full of exhilaration and the very breath of youth and adventure,
very uplifting to the heart. My spirits, that had been momentarily
dashed by my unwelcome passenger, rose again, and I felt kindly to all
the earth, and glad to be alive.

I called to Tom for breakfast.

"And you, boys, there; haven't you got a song you can put up? How about
'The _John B._ sails?'" And I led them off, the hiss and swirl of the
sea, and the wind making a brisk undertone as we sang one of the quaint
Nassau ditties:

Come on the sloop _John B._
My grandfather and me,
Round Nassau town we did roam;
Drinking all night, ve got in a fight,
Ve feel so break-up, ve vant to go home.

_Chorus_
So h'ist up the _John B._ sails,
See how the mainsail set,
Send for the captain--shore, let us go home,
Let me go home, let me go home,
I feel so break-up, I vant to go home.

The first mate he got drunk,
Break up the people trunk,
Constable come aboard, take him away;
Mr. John--stone, leave us alone,
I feel so break-up, I vant to go home.

_Chorus_
So h'ist up the _John B._ sails, _etc.,_ _etc._

Nassau looked very pretty in the morning sunlight, with its pink and
white houses nestling among palm trees and the masts of its sponging
schooners, and soon we were abreast of the picturesque low-lying fort,
Fort Montague, that Major Bruce, nearly two hundred years ago, had had
such a time building as a protection against pirates entering from the
east end of the harbour. It looked like a veritable piece of the past,
and set the imagination dreaming of those old days of Spanish galleons
and the black flag, and brought my thoughts eagerly back to the object
of my trip, those doubloons and pieces of eight that lay in glittering
heaps somewhere out in those island wildernesses.

We were passing cays of jagged cinder-coloured rock covered with low
bushes and