Here a handful of Englishmen, clothed in the white linen suits of the tropics, carry on the Government after the traditional manner of British colonies from time immemorial, each of them, like my friend, not without an English smile at the humour of the thing, supporting the dignity of offices with impressive names—­Lord Chief Justice, Attorney General, Speaker of the House, Lord High Admiral, Colonial Secretary and so forth—­and occasionally a figure in gown and barrister’s wig flits across the green from the little courthouse, where the Lord Chief Justice in his scarlet robes, on a dais surmounted by a gilded lion and unicorn, sustains the majesty of British justice, with all the pomp of Westminster or Whitehall.

My friend the Secretary of the Treasury is a man possessing in an uncommon degree that rare and most attractive of human qualities, companionableness.  He is a quiet man of middle age, an old white-headed bachelor with a droll twinkling expression, speaking seldom, and then in a curious silent fashion, as though the drowsy heat of the tropics had soaked him through and through.  With his white hair, his white clothes, his white moustachios, his white eyelashes, over eyes that seem to hide away among quiet mirthful wrinkles, he carries about him the sort of silence that goes with a miller, surrounded by the white dusty quiet of his mill.

As we sit together in the hush of his snuggery of an evening, surrounded by guns, fishing-lines, and old prints, there are times when we scarcely exchange a dozen words between dinner and bed-time, and yet we have all the time a keen and satisfying sense of companionship.  It is John Saunders’s gift.  Companionship seems quietly to ooze out of him, without the need of words.  He and you are there in your comfortable arm-chairs, with a good cigar, a whisky-and-soda, or a glass of that old port on which he prides himself, and that is all that is necessary.  Where is the need of words?

And occasionally, we have, as third in those evening conclaves, a big slow-smiling, broad-faced young merchant, of the same kidney.  In he drops with a nod and a smile, selects his cigar and his glass, and takes his place in the smoke-cloud of our meditations, radiating, without the effort of speech, that good thing—­humanity; though one must not forget the one subject on which now and again the good Charlie Webster achieves eloquence in spite of himself—­duck-shooting.  That is the only subject worth breaking the pleasant brotherhood of silence for.

John Saunders’s subject is shark-fishing.  Duck-shooting and shark-fishing.  It is enough.  Here, for sensible men, is a sufficient basis for life-long friendship, and unwearying, inexhaustible companionship.

It was in this peace of John Saunders’s snuggery, one July evening, in 1903, the three of us being duly met, and ensconced in our respective arm-chairs, that we got on to the subject of buried treasure.  We had talked more than usual that evening—­talked duck and shark till those inexhaustible themes seemed momentarily exhausted.  Then it was I who started us off again by asking John what he knew about buried treasure.