The second day he sits up and says in English:  “Who are you?” So I told him.  Then he says:  “Why are you doing this for me?  You wouldn’t do it if you knew who I am.”  “I’d do it,” I said, “if you were the devil.”  “I am next door to him,” he says.  “I am Melhuish, of the Poison Island Treasure.”  “I never heard of it,” said I.  “There’s others call it the Priests’ Treasure,” says he; “and if you have never heard of it, you cannot have sailed anywhere near the Bay of Honduras.”  “Never in my life,” I said.  “My business has lain along the coast for years.  But what of it?” “What of it?” he says, sitting up, his eyes all shining with the fever, “why, nothing, except that I am one of the richest men in the world.”  I set this down to raving.  “You don’t believe me?” he asks after some time.  “Why,” I answers him, “this is a funny sort of place for a nabob, and that you must allow; not to mention,” I adds, “that from here to Honduras is a long step.”  “You fool!” said he, “that is the very reason of it.  I don’t believe in a hell on the t’other shore of this life, whatever your views may be.  You go to sleep and have done with it—­that’s my belief.  But I believe in hell upon earth, because I have lived in it.  And I believe in a devil upon earth, because I lived months in his company; but he can’t be as clever as the priests make out, because I came here to hide from him, and hidden I have.”

With that he fell into cursing and raving, but after a time he grew quiet again, and said he:  “Daniel Coffin, if that is your name, there’s hundreds of thousands of men walking this world would envy you at this moment.  And why?  Because I can make you richer than any Lord Mayor in his coach; and, what’s more, I will.”

He said no more that evening, but next day woke up in his wits, and asked me to slip a hand under his pillow and take out what I found there.  Which I took out a piece of parchment.  He said:  “Coffin, I am going to be as good as my word.  That there which you hold in your hand is a map of the Island of Mortallone, where the treasure lies.  I will tell you how I come by it.

“My home,” he said, “was St. Mary’s, in Newfoundland, which is but a small harbour and a few wood houses gathered about a factory.  The factory belonged to a firm at Carbonear, and employed, one way and another, all the people in the place, in number less than two hundred.  The women worked at the fish-curing, along with the children and some old men, but the able-bodied men belonged mostly to the Labrador fleet, or manned a two-three small vessels that made regular voyages to the Island of St. Jago to fetch home salt for the pickling.  My mother, besides working at the factory, kept a boarding-house for seamen.  In this she was helped by my only sister, a middle-aged woman and single.  My mother was a widow.  She kept her house very respectable, but the business was slight, the town being empty of men most of the year.