xt few hours, I might need a friend.

Fishing occurred to me as a way of passing the time.

"Are we going too fast for fishing, Tom?" I asked.

"Not too fast for a barracouta," said Tom; so we put out lines and
watched the stretched strings, and listened to the sea. After awhile,
Tom's line grew taut, and we hauled in a 5-foot barracouta, a bar of
silver with a long flat head, all speed and ferocity, and wonderful
teeth.

"Look!" said Tom, as he pointed to a little writhing eel-like shape,
about nine inches long, attached to the belly of the barracouta.

"A sucking fish!" said Tom. "That's good luck;" and he proceeded to turn
over the poor creature, and cut from his back, immediately below his
head, a flat inch and a half of skin lined and stamped like a rubber
sole--the device by which he held on to the belly of the barracouta much
as the circle of wet leather holds the stone in a school-boy's sling.

"Now," he said, when he had it clean and neat in his fingers, "we must
hang this up and dry it in the northeast wind; the wind is just
right--nor'-nor'east--and there is no mascot like it, specially
when--" Old Tom hesitated, with a slyly innocent smile in his eyes.

"What is it, Tom?" I asked.

"Have I your permission to speak, sah?" he said.

"Of course, you have, Tom."

"Well, sar, then I meant to say that this particular part of a sucking
fish, properly dried in the northeast wind, is a wonderful mascot--when
you're going after treasure." Tom looked frightened again, as though he
had gone too far.

"Who said I was going after treasure?" I asked.

"Aren't you, sah?" replied Tom, "asking your pardon?"

I looked for'ard where the three delegates seemed to have lost interest
for a while in their conversation and the fluttering paper, and appeared
to be noticing Tom and me.

"Let's talk it over later on, when you bring me my dinner, Tom."

Later, as Tom stood, serving my coffee, I took it up with him again.

"What was that you were saying about treasure, Tom?" I asked.

"Well, sar, what I meant was this: that going after treasure is a
dangerous business ... it's not only the living you've got to think
of--." Here Tom threw a careful eye for'ard.

"The crew, you mean?"

He nodded.

"But it's the dead too."

"The dead, Tom?"

"Yes, sar--the dead!"

"All right, Tom," I said, "go on."

"Well, sar," he continued, "there was never a buried treasure yet that
didn't claim its victim. Not one or two,