sition of the treasure,
and made some effort to secure the assistance of the crew in the
carrying out of this plan, whatever it might happen to have been.
Failing in this, might he not, out of sheer malice, have communicated
the secret to some one else--our present cook, for instance--and
instigated the man to take some such steps as himself had contemplated?
Such a proceeding would at once account satisfactorily for the curious
fact that I had succeeded in obtaining a crew when no other shipmaster
within the port could do so. The only weak element of such a
supposition consisted in my inability to reconcile myself to the belief
that such a man as our late steward would ever, under any provocation,
be weak enough to part with a secret that might, even under the most
unlikely combination of circumstances and in the most distant future,
possibly be of some advantage to himself. Yet this man, Martin, whose
life I had saved, and who had impressed me as being a thoroughly honest,
straightforward, trustworthy fellow, roundly asserted that something of
a secret and mysterious character was going on among the newly shipped
men--something from which he, on account of his assumed integrity, had
been quietly yet consistently excluded; and he had heard the word
"treasure" mentioned by these presumable conspirators. Then I argued
with myself that, after all, when one came to reflect upon it, the
exclusive ways of these ex-gold-miners and the mere mention of the word
"treasure" seemed rather slender threads from which to weave so
portentous a suspicion as that which Joe's communication had suggested.
For aught that I knew, the late steward's discourses upon the subject of
the treasure might have been of such a character as to suggest to the
minds of his hearers an absurdly exaggerated idea of its value, leaving
upon honest Joe's mind the impression that it must be fabulously rich,
and altogether the kind of thing to obtain possession of which men would
hesitate at no crime, however monstrous. And, having had experience of
one attempt to gain possession of it by means of treachery, was it not
natural that the simple fellow, discovering, or believing that he had
discovered, something in the nature of a secret understanding among his
shipmates, should at once leap to the conclusion that it was nothing
less than a second attempt upon the treasure that was being planned? As
to the cook's inquiry whether Joe would not rather be a rich m