l'y."

"Ze boocaneer cap'en," repeated Jan, utterly flabbergasted--"ze
boocaneer cap'en?"

"Aye, ye durned fule; don't ye reck'lect the coon ez ye told me ez
burrit the treesure? Come on quick, or I guess we'll lose him!"

"And yous have zeen hims?"

"Aye, I hev seed him, sure enuff," replied Captain Snaggs, seizing Jan,
and trying to drag him with him; "an', what's more, he an' I've been
drinkin' together, me joker. We've hed a reg'ler high old time in the
vall'y thaar, this arternoon, ye bet!"

"In ze valleys?"

"By thunder! ye're that slow ye'd anger a saint, which I ain't one,"
returned Captain Snaggs, indignantly. "I mean the vall'y whaar the
skeletons is crawlin' about an' the skulls grinning--thet air one
belongin' to the buccaneer cuss is a prime one, I ken tell ye. It beats
creation, it dew, with the lizards a-creepin' through the sockets, an' a
big snake in his teeth. Jeehosophat! how he did swaller down the
licker!"

Up to now the men could not understand that anything out of the common
was the matter with the skipper beyond being drunk, perhaps, and in a
passion--no, not even Jan; but, as soon as he got talking on this tack
about snakes and skulls, then all saw what was the matter.

So, now, on his darting off towards the hills in his delirium, Jan
Steenbock and Jim Chowder, with a couple of the other hands, quickly
followed in pursuit of the demented man.

He had got a good minute's start, however, before they recovered from
their astonishment at his incoherent speech and were able to grasp the
situation; so, he was almost out of sight by the time they went after
him.

It was a long chase, Jim said, for they went in and out between the
thorny fleshy-handed cactus trees and over the lava field, tumbling into
holes here and tearing themselves to pieces with the thorns there--the
skipper all the while maintaining his lead in front and running along as
freely and smoothly as if the track were an even path, instead of being
through a desert waste like that they raced over.

After a bit, they passed over all the intervening lava field and struck
amongst the grass and trees; and then they came up to Mr Flinders, who
was still lashed on the back of his tortoise, which had `brought up all
standing' by the side of a little water-spring, and was greedily gulping
down long draughts of the limpid stream that rippled through the glade
beneath the shade of a number of dwarf oaks and zafrau trees which h