“It’s the beginning of the price,” said Tom.

“The beginning of the price?”

“It’s the dead hand,” continued Tom; “I told you, you’ll remember, that wherever treasure is there’s a ghost of a dead man keeping guard, and waiting till another dead man comes along to take up sentry duty so to say.”

“That’s what you said, Tom,” I admitted.  “Several men have been killed, it’s true, but no one’s put his hand on the treasure.”

“All the worse for that!” replied Tom, shaking his head.  “These are only a beginning.  The ghost is getting busy.  And it makes me think that we’re coming pretty near to the treasure, or we wouldn’t have had all this happen.”

“Growing warm, you mean, as the children say?”

“The very thing!” said Tom.  “Mark me, the treasure’s near by—­or the ghost wouldn’t be so malicious.”

And then, looking around where the captain, and the engineer and Silly Theodore lay, I said: 

“The first thing we’ve got to do is to bury these poor fellows; but where,” I added, “are the other two that fell in the water?”

“O,” said Tom, “a couple of sharks got them just before you woke up.”

CHAPTER IX

In Which Tom and I Attend Several Funerals.

When Tom and I came to look over the ground with a view to finding a burial-place for the dead, I realised with grim emphasis the truth of Charlie Webster’s remarks—­in those snuggery nights that seemed so remote and far away—­on the nature of the soil which would have to be gone over in quest of my treasure.  No wonder he had spoken of dynamite.

“Why, Tom,” I said, “there isn’t a wheel-barrow load of real soil in a square mile.  We couldn’t dig a grave for a dog in stuff like this,” and, as I spoke, the pewter-like rock under my feet clanged and echoed with a metallic sound.

It was indeed a terrible land from the point of view of the husbandman.  No wonder the Government couldn’t dispose of it as a gift.  It was a marvel that anything had the fierce courage to grow on it at all.  For the most part it was of a grey clinker-like formation, tossed, as by fiery convulsions, in shelves of irregular strata, with holes every few feet suggesting the circular action of the sea—­some of these holes no more than a foot wide, and some as wide as an ordinary-sized well—­and in these was the only soil to be found.  In them the strange and savage trees—­spined, and sown thick with sharp teeth—­found their rootage, and writhed about, splitting the rock into endless cracks and fissures with their fierce effort—­sea-grape, with leaves like cymbal-shaped plates of green metal; gum-elemi trees, with trunks of glistening bronze; and seven-year apples, with fruit like painted wood.