Well, all I have is in this venture.  The old farm paid for the Island Queen—­or will, if I don’t get back in time to prevent foreclosure.  All my staid New England relatives think me mad.  A copra gatherer!  A fine career for a minister’s son!  Think how your father scrimped to send you to college—­Aunt Sarah reproached me.  Well, when I get home with my Spanish doubloons there will be another story to tell.  I won’t be poor crazy Peter then.  And Helen—­oh, how often I wish I had told her everything!  It was too much to ask her to trust me blindly as I did.  But from the moment I came across the story in grandfather’s old, half-forgotten diary—­by the way, the diary habit seems to run in the family—­a very passion of secrecy has possessed me.  If I had told Helen, I should have had to dread that even in her sweet sleep she might whisper something to put that ferret, her stepmother, on the scent.  Oh, Helen, trust me, trust me!

December 25.  I have a calendar with me, so I am not reduced to notching a stick to keep track of the days.  I mark each off carefully in the calendar.  If I were to forget to do this, even for a day or two, I believe I should quite lose track.  The days are so terribly alike!

My predecessor here in the copra-gathering business, old Heintz, really left me a very snug establishment.  It was odd that I should have run across him at Panama that way.  I sounded him on the question of treasure.  He said placidly that of course the island had been the resort of Edward Davis and Benito Bonito and others of the black flag gentry, and he thought it very likely they had left some of their spoils behind them, but though he had done a little investigating as he had time he had come on nothing but a ship’s lantern, a large iron kettle, and the golden setting of a bracelet from which the jewels had been removed.  He had already disposed of the bracelet.  The kettle I found here, and sank in the spring to keep the water clear. (Where it still is.  V. H.) Evidently old Heintz knew nothing of the Bonny Lass.  This was an immense satisfaction, as it proves that the story can not have been noised about.

Christmas Day!  I wonder what they are all doing at home?  December 28.  Of course the cave under the point is the logical place.  I have been unable to find any stone marked B. H. on the ground above it, but I fear that a search after Bill’s tombstone would be hopeless.  Although the formation of the island is of the sort to contain numerous caves, still they must be considerably less plentiful than possible tombstones.  Under circumstances such as those of the mate’s story, it seems to me that all the probabilities point to their concealing the chest in the cave with an opening on the bay.  It must have been necessary for them to act as quickly as possible, that their absence from the ship might go unnoticed—­though I believe the three conspirators had made the crew drunk.  Then to