Captain Coffin winked, touched his breast, and wagged his forefinger at me impressively.

“That makes twice,” he went on.  “Twice that devil has got the better of every one.  But the third time’s lucky, they say.  He may be dead afore this; he’ll be getting an oldish man, anyway, and life on that cursed island can’t be good for his health.  We won’t go in a crowd this time, neither; not a dozen, nor yet four of us, but only you an’ me, Brooks.  It’s the safer way—­the only safe way—­an’ there’ll be the fatter sharin’s.  Now you know—­hey?—­why Branscome’s givin’ me lessons in navigation.”

He chuckled, and was moving off mysteriously to a back doorway behind the dresser, but halted and came back to the table beside which I stood, making no motion to follow him.

“Look ye here, Brooks,” said be.  “If there’s anything you don’t get the hang of—­anything that takes ye aback, so to speak, in what I’m tellin’ you—­you just hitch on an’ trust to old Dan Coffin; to old Dan, as’ll do for you more than ever your godfathers an’ godmothers did at your baptism.  You’ll pick up a full breeze as you go on.  Man, the treasure’s there!  Man, I’ve handled it, or enough of it to keep you in a coach-an’-six, with nothing to do but loll on cushions for the rest o’ your days, an’ pick your teeth at the crowd.  And look ye here.”  He waved a hand around the room.  “I’m old Danny Coffin, ain’t I? poor old drunken Danny Coffin, eh?  Yet cast an eye about ye.  Nice fittin’s, ben’t they?  Hitch down my coat off the peg there; feel the cloth of it; take it between finger and thumb.  Ay, I don’t live upon air, nor keep house an’ fixtures upon nothin’ at all.  There—­if you want more proof!” He dived a hand into his trouser-pocket, and held out a golden coin under my nose.  “There! that very dollar came from the island, and I’m offerin’ you the fellows to it by the thousand.  Why? says you.  Because, says I, you’re a good lad, and I’ve took a fancy to see you in Parlyment.  That’s why.  An’ it’s no return I’m askin’ you, but just to believe!”

He made for the back door again, and opened it, letting in the sunlight; but the sunlight fell in two slanting rays, one on either side of a dark object which all but filled the entrance, blocking out my view of the back court beyond.  It was the stern of a tall boat.

The boat, in fact, filled the small back court, leaving an alley-way scarcely more than two feet wide along either party-wall.  She rested on the stocks, about three-parts finished, in shape very like a whaleboat, and in measurement—­so Captain Coffin informed me, with a proprietary wave of the hand—­some twenty-nix feet over all, with a beam of nine feet six inches amidships.  And even to a boy’s eye she showed herself a pretty model, though (as I say) unfinished, with a foot and more of her ribs standing up bare and awaiting the top strakes.