in as I dared, and taking note of every crevice
that might be the mouth of a cave. Then, either in the rowboat or
by scrambling down the cliffs, I visit the indicated point. It is
bitterly hard labor, but it has its compensations. I am growing
hale and strong, brown and muscular. Aunt Sarah won't offer me any
more of her miserable decoctions when I go home. Heading first
toward the north, I am systematically making the rounds of the
island, for, after all, how do I know for certain that Captain
Sampson buried his treasure near the east anchorage? For greater
security he may have chosen the other side, where there is another
bay, I should judge deeper and freer of rocks than this one, though
more open to storms.

So far I have discovered half a dozen caves, most of them quite
small. Any one of them seemed such a likely place that at first I
was quite hopeful. But I have found nothing. Usually, the floor
of the cave beneath a few inches of sand is rock. Only in the
great cave under the point have I found sand to any depth. The
formation in some cases is little more than a hardened clay, but to
excavate it would require long toil, probably blasting--and I have
no explosives. And I go always on the principle that Captain
Sampson and his two assistants had not time for any elaborate work
of concealment. Most likely they laid the chest in some natural
niche. Sailors are unskilled in the use of such implements as
spades, and besides, the very heart of the undertaking was haste
and secrecy. They must have worked at night and between two tides,
for few of the caves can be reached except at the ebb. And I take
it as certain that the cave must have opened directly on the sea.
For three men to transport such a weight and bulk by land would be
sheer impossibility.

February 10. To-day a strange, strange thing happened--so strange,
so wonderful and glorious that it ought to be recorded in luminous
ink. And I owe it all to Benjy! Little dog, you shall go in a
golden collar and eat lamb-chops every day! This morning--

Across my absorption in the diary cut the unwelcome clangor of
Cookie's gong. Right on the breathless edge of discovery I was
summoned, with my thrilling secret in my breast, to join my
unsuspecting companions. I hid the book carefully in my cot. Not
until the light of to-morrow morning could I return to its perusal.
How I was to survive the interval I did not know. But on one point
my mind