South Point, 27 feet," I remembered
that the clasp said. He measured it out to the end, and then,
digging with his heel a small hole in the sand, began to walk back
towards the rock, this time to the north side. And still I waited.

Again I could hear him searching for the mark--an old iron ring, once
used for mooring boats--and cursing because he could not find it.
After a minute or two, however, he came into sight again, drawing his
line now straight out from the cliff, due west. He was very slow,
and every now and then, as he bent over his task, would look swiftly
about him with a hunted air, and then set to work again. Still there
was no sight but the round moon overhead, the sparkling stretch of
sand, and the gleam of the waves as they broke in curving lines of
silver: no sound but the sigh of the night breeze.

Apparently his measurements were successful, for the tape led him
once more to the hole he had marked in the sand. He paused for a
moment or two, drew out the clasp, which shot out a sudden gleam as
he turned it in his hand, and consulted it carefully. Presumably
satisfied, he walked back to the rock to fetch his tools. And still
I crouched, waiting, with knife in hand.

Arrived once more at the point where the two lines met, he threw a
hasty glance around, and began to dig rapidly. He faced the sea now,
and had his back turned to me, so that I could straighten myself up,
and watch at greater ease. He dug rapidly, and the pit, as his spade
threw out heap after heap of soft sand, grew quickly bigger.
If treasure really lay there, it would soon be disclosed.

Presently I heard his spade strike against something hard. Surely he
had not yet dug deeply enough. The clasp had said "four feet six
inches," and the pit could not yet be more than three feet in depth.
Colliver bent down and drew something out, then examined it intently.
As I strained forward to look, he half turned, and I saw between his
hands--a human skull. Whose? Doubtless, some victim's of those many
that went down in the _Belle Fortune_; or perhaps the skull of John
Railton, sunk here above the treasure to gain which he had taken the
lives of other men and lost in the end his own. It was a grisly
thought, but apparently troubled Colliver little, for with a jerk of
his arm he sent it bowling down the sands towards the breakers.
A bound or two, a splash, and it was swallowed up once more by the
insatiate sea.

With this he fell t