“Chinese,” said the man with the map.

“Of course! He was a Chinee,” said Evans.

“They all were,” said the man with the map.

They both sat for some minutes staring at the land, while the canoe drifted slowly.  Then Evans looked towards the paddle.

“Your turn with the paddle now, Hooker,” said he.

And his companion quietly folded up his map, put it in his pocket, passed Evans carefully, and began to paddle.  His movements were languid, like those of a man whose strength was nearly exhausted.  Evans sat with his eyes half closed, watching the frothy breakwater of the coral creep nearer and nearer.  The sky was like a furnace now, for the sun was near the zenith.  Though they were so near the Treasure he did not feel the exaltation he had anticipated.  The intense excitement of the struggle for the plan, and the long night voyage from the mainland in the unprovisioned canoe had, to use his own expression, “taken it out of him.”  He tried to arouse himself by directing his mind to the ingots the Chinamen had spoken of, but it would not rest there; it came back headlong to the thought of sweet water rippling in the river, and to the almost unendurable dryness of his lips and throat.  The rhythmic wash of the sea upon the reef was becoming audible now, and it had a pleasant sound in his ears; the water washed along the side of the canoe, and the paddle dripped between each stroke.  Presently he began to doze.

He was still dimly conscious of the island, but a queer dream texture interwove with his sensations.  Once again it was the night when he and Hooker had hit upon the Chinamen’s secret; he saw the moonlit trees, the little fire burning, and the black figures of the three Chinamen—­silvered on one side by moonlight, and on the other glowing from the firelight—­and heard them talking together in pigeon-English—­for they came from different provinces.  Hooker had caught the drift of their talk first, and had motioned to him to listen.  Fragments of the conversation were inaudible and fragments incomprehensible.  A Spanish galleon from the Philippines hopelessly aground, and its treasure buried against the day of return, lay in the background of the story; a shipwrecked crew thinned by disease, a quarrel or so, and the needs of discipline, and at last taking to their boats never to be heard of again.  Then Chang-hi, only a year since, wandering ashore, had happened upon the ingots hidden for two hundred years, had deserted his junk, and reburied them with infinite toil, single-handed but very safe.  He laid great stress on the safety—­it was a secret of his.  Now he wanted help to return and exhume them.  Presently the little map fluttered and the voices sank.  A fine story for two stranded British wastrels to hear!  Evans’ dream shifted to the moment when he had Chang-hi’s pigtail in his hand.  The life of a Chinaman is scarcely sacred like a European’s.  The cunning little face of Chang-hi, first keen and furious like