“That we shall soon know,” replied the doctor.  “But you are so confoundedly hot-headed and exclamatory that I cannot get a word in.  What I want to know is this:  Supposing that I have here in my pocket some clue to where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount to much?”

“Amount, sir!” cried the squire.  “It will amount to this:  If we have the clue you talk about, I fit out a ship in Bristol dock, and take you and Hawkins here along, and I’ll have that treasure if I search a year.”

“Very well,” said the doctor.  “Now, then, if Jim is agreeable, we’ll open the packet”; and he laid it before him on the table.

The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his instrument case and cut the stitches with his medical scissors.  It contained two things—­a book and a sealed paper.

“First of all we’ll try the book,” observed the doctor.

The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as he opened it, for Dr. Livesey had kindly motioned me to come round from the side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search.  On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice.  One was the same as the tattoo mark, “Billy Bones his fancy”; then there was “Mr. W. Bones, mate,” “No more rum,” “Off Palm Key he got itt,” and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible.  I could not help wondering who it was that had “got itt,” and what “itt” was that he got.  A knife in his back as like as not.

“Not much instruction there,” said Dr. Livesey as he passed on.

The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries.  There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a sum of money, as in common account-books, but instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two.  On the 12th of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause.  In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as “Offe Caraccas,” or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as “62o 17’ 20”, 19o 2’ 40".”

The record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount of the separate entries growing larger as time went on, and at the end a grand total had been made out after five or six wrong additions, and these words appended, “Bones, his pile.”

“I can’t make head or tail of this,” said Dr. Livesey.

“The thing is as clear as noonday,” cried the squire.  “This is the black-hearted hound’s account-book.  These crosses stand for the names of ships or towns that they sank or plundered.  The sums are the scoundrel’s share, and where he feared an ambiguity, you see he added something clearer.  ‘Offe Caraccas,’ now; you see, here was some unhappy vessel boarded off that coast.  God help the poor souls that manned her—­coral long ago.”