should say. If I
only held a sufficient clue to warrant the slightest hope of success, I
would willingly prosecute a search, but I do not."

"Are you _quite sure_ that you do not?" she returned, still very
nervously. "Tell us the story all over again; perhaps some useful idea
may suggest itself to one or other of us, if it is all gone carefully
over once more."

"Certainly I will," said I, "if it be only to gratify you, little one; I
anticipate no further result. You must know, then, Ella and gentlemen,
that the Spaniard who told me this story was on his death-bed when he
confided it to me. He asserted that a treasure-ship lay buried in the
sandy beach of a certain island here in the Pacific, and he not only
gave me the latitude and longitude of the island, but he minutely
described it, so that I might recognise it at once, and he also
described certain marks whereby I might be able to fix upon the exact
spot in the beach where the buried treasure-ship lay."

"And I suppose you have fixed upon your mind a kind of mental picture of
this island, drawn from the description given you," said Ella; "and I
presume you are of opinion that you would recognise the island in a
moment, if you saw it?"

"Exactly so," I answered. "I can see it before me at this moment,"--
shutting my eyes--"as distinctly as possible. There it lies, about
three miles away, with the surf beating all round it; and there, in bold
relief against the clear blue sky, stands the isolated clump of seven
cocoa-nut trees on the extreme northernmost point of the island."

"Somewhat like these that we are sitting under at this moment?"
interrupted Ella excitedly.

"Ye-es," said I, "certainly; somewhat like these. It is curious now,
but I never noticed until this moment that these trees are seven in
number. If, now, any two of them were _marked_ in any way--"

"Somewhat like this?" again interrupted Ella, as she started to her feet
and placed her hand upon a very perceptible scar in the trunk of the
central tree.

We sprang to our feet as one man, infinitely more excited even than Ella
was, and walked up to the tree and carefully examined the mark. There
was no mistake about it, the bark had been deeply cut away with a knife,
and I cannot, for the life of me, say how it was that it had never
attracted my attention, unless it be that the wound was now weather-
stained, and by no means so conspicuous as I had pictured it in my mind;
perhaps it was