After all, on the way back from the cave Benjy brought down a pig.  So he is as well pleased with the day as I am.  Now I am sitting in the doorway of my cabin, writing up my journal, and trying to calm down enough to go to bed.  If it were not for the swift fading of daylight, I would go back to the cave for another peep into the chest.  But all round the island the sea is moaning with that peculiarly melancholy note that comes with the falling of night.  The sea-birds have risen from the cove and gone wheeling off in troops to their nests on the cliffs.  Somehow a curious dislike, almost fear, of this wild, sea-girt, solitary place has come over me.  I long for the sound of human voices, the touch of human hands.  I think of the dead man lying there at the door of the cave, its silent guardian for so long.  I suppose he brooded once on the thought of the gold as I do—­perhaps he has been brooding so these ninety years!  I wonder if he is pleased that I, a stranger, have come into possession of his secret hoard at last?

Oh, Helen, turn your heavenly face on me—­be my refuge from these shuddering unwholesome thoughts!  The gold is for you—­for you!  Surely that must cleanse it of its stains, must loose the clutch of the dead hands that strive to hold it!

February 11.  This morning I was early at the cave.  Yes, there it was, the same wonder-chest that I had dreamed of all night long.  It was absurd how the tightness in my breast relaxed.

I began at once the work of removing the bags from the chest and stacking them in the corner of the cave.  It was a fatiguing job, I had to stoop so.  At the bottom of the chest I found a small portfolio of very fine leather containing documents in Spanish.  They bear an official seal.  Although I should be interested to know their meaning, I think I shall destroy them.  They weaken my feeling of ownership; I suppose there is a slight flavor of lawlessness in my carrying off the gold from the island like this.  Very likely the little Spanish-American state which has some claim to overlordship here would dispute my right to the treasure-trove.

I spent so much time unloading the chest and poring over the papers, trying, by means of my ill-remembered Latin, to make out the sense of the kindred Spanish, that before I was ready to go for my boat the tide was up and pounding on the rocks below the cave.  I find that only at certain stages of the tide is the cave approachable by sea.  At the turn after high water, for instance, there is such a terrific undertow that it sets up a small maelstrom among the reefs lying off the island.  At low tide is the time to come.

February 12.  Got the chest out of the cave, though it was a difficult job.  I don’t know of what wood the thing is built—­some South American hardwood, I fancy—­but it weighs like metal.  The heavy brass clampings count for something, of course.  Luckily there was no sea, and I had a smooth passage around the point, I laughed rather ruefully as I passed the Cave of the Two Arches.  To think of the toil I wasted there!  I wish Benjy had encountered the fateful pig a little sooner.