He went on:  “About two weeks later there called a clerk from the factory to claim the chest, the firm having acted as Mr. Shand’s agents.  He was a foreign-looking man, and older than most of the clerks employed by Davis and Atchison—­which was the firm’s name.  He gave his own name as Martin.  He had been sent over from Carbonear about ten days before to teach the factory a new way of treating seal-pelts by means of chemicals.  We learnt afterwards that he earned good wages.  He had brought two hands from the factory to carry the chest, which we gave up to him as soon as he presented a letter from Mr. Hughes, the firm’s chief agent.  He said:  ’Is this all you have?’ And we said, ‘Yes.’  We Kept quiet about the map, which we had examined, but could not make head nor tail of it.  He went away with the chest, and we heard no more of the matter.  The winter closing in, I took service in the factory.  I used to run against this Martin almost every day, but being my superior he never got beyond nodding to me.

“So it went on, that winter.  The next spring I sailed with the salting fleet as usual.  I was mate by this time, and had learned to navigate.  I came back, to find Martin seated in the parlour and talking, and my mother told me he had asked my sister to marry him.  They had met at the factory and fixed it up between them.  He appeared to be very fond of my sister, who was usually reckoned a plain-featured woman, and there couldn’t be a doubt she was fond of him.  Later on, I heard that she had told him all about the chart, but had not shown it to him, being afraid to do so without my leave.

“He opened the subject himself about a week later, during which I had become very thick with him.  He said that, in his belief, there was money in it, and I was a fool not to take it up.  I answered, What could I do?  He said there was ways and means that a lad of spirit ought to be able to discover.  With that he talked no more of it that day, but it cropped up again, and by little and little he so worked me up that I took to dreaming of the cursed thing.

“This went on for another fortnight, during which time he told me a deal about himself, very frank—­as that he was the son of an English sea-captain and a Spanish woman, and was born in Havana; that he had been educated by the Jesuits, who had meant to make a priest of him; that, not being able to abide the Spaniards, he had chased over to Port Royal and studied chemistry in the college there.  It was there, he said, he had discovered a preparation for curing the hides of animals so that the hair never dropped off, but remained as firm and fresh as life.  He told me that for this secret Davis and Atchison paid him better than any of their clerks.