opportunity for completing my plans. That
same evening, after dinner, Forbes, Sir Edgar, and I discussed the
matter in detail, and finally completed certain arrangements that
appeared to us to promise a fairly satisfactory solution of the whole
difficulty. On the following day I found an opportunity to communicate
to Joe the pith of these arrangements--which were to be put into
operation as soon as ever the treasure, if found, should be safely
placed on board the barque--and he cheerfully undertook to maintain a
constant watch for my signals, and to be ready for action whenever I
should make them.

The next three days passed uneventfully away, the men working perhaps
not quite so hard as they had at the outset, but still making fairly
good progress. The party on the islet had reached to within eighty feet
of their goal when they knocked off that night; and now, for the first
time, I think, I began to fully realise the momentous character of the
issues that were probably to be decided within the next twenty-four
hours. Would the treasure be found? Hitherto it had never occurred to
me to seriously reflect that there might possibly be an unfavourable
reply to this question; but now that only a few short hours lay between
me and certainty, I suddenly began to comprehend how much depended upon
whether that reply should prove to be Yea or Nay; and an almost
uncontrollable impatience to have the matter definitely decided took
possession of me, rendering sleep that night an impossibility. But,
even with the impatient, though time may lag upon leaden wings, he
passes at last; and the morning at length dawned upon me with my nerves
quieted and steadied by exhaustion and the reaction from the night's
intolerable excitement.

As it was confidently expected that, if the treasure really existed, and
still reposed in its alleged hiding-place, it would that day be found,
the ladies determined to go on shore to witness its disinterment, taking
the nursemaids and children with them in order that the latter might
enjoy what would probably prove to be their last opportunity for a
ramble on the lovely island. Accordingly, the party being a large one,
both gigs were manned, and all hands of us, even to the cook and
steward, went ashore, leaving the ship to take care of herself; the wind
being a gentle breeze from the eastward, or somewhat off the land, with
a fine, settled look about the weather. Rogers and his party resumed
their