But Tobias’s challenge made such a course impossible for any man worthy of the name, and I never gave the alternative a moment’s consideration.  But I did give Tom his choice of staying or going—­a choice made possible that day by a schooner sailing close in shore and easy to signal.  Yet Tom, while making no secret of his real feelings, would not hear of quitting.

“I sha’n’t think a cent worse of you, Tom,” I assured him.  “Indeed, I won’t.  It’s no doubt a mad business anyway, and I’m not sure I’ve the right to endanger in it any other lives than my own.”

“No, sar,” said Tom; “I came with you, you have treated me right, and I am going to see you through.”

“You’re the real thing; God bless you, Tom,” I exclaimed.  “But I doubt if I’ve the right to take advantage of your goodness.  I’m not sure that I oughtn’t to signal those fellows to take you off with them willy-nilly.”

“No, sar, you wouldn’t do that, I’m sure.  I’m a free man, God be praised, though my mother and father were slaves”—­and he drew himself up with pathetic pride—­“and I can choose my own course, as they couldn’t.  Besides, there’s no one needs me at home; all my girls and boys are well fixed; and if I have to go, perhaps there’s some one needs me more in heaven.”

“All right, Tom, and thank you; we’ll say no more about it.”  And so we let the schooner go by, and turned to the consideration of our plans.

First we went over our stores, and, thanks to those poor dead mouths that did not need to be reckoned with any more, we had plenty of everything to last us for at least a month, not to speak of fishing, at which Tom was an expert.

When, however, we turned to our plans for the treasure-hunting, we soon came to a dead stop.  No plans seemed feasible in face of that rocky wilderness, all knives to the feet, and writhing serpents of fanged and toothed foliage to the eye, with brambles like barbed-wire fences at every yard.

The indications given by Tobias seemed, in the face of such a terrain, naive to a degree.  Possibly the land had changed since his day.  Some little, of course, it must have done.  Tom and I went over Tobias’s directions again and again.  Of course, there was the compass carved on the rock, and the cross.  There was something definite—­something which, if it was ever there at all, was there still—­for in that climate the weather leaves things unperished almost as in Egypt.

Sitting on the highest bluff we could find, Tom and I looked around.

“That compass is somewhere among these infernal rocks—­if it ever was carved there at all—­that’s one thing certain, Tom; but look at the rocks!”

Over twenty miles of rocks north and south, and from two to six from east to west.  A more hopeless job the mind of man could not conceive.  Tom shook his head, and scratched his greying wool.

“I go most by the ghost, sar,” he said.  “All these men had never been killed if the ghost hadn’t been somewhere near.  It’s the ghost I go by.  Mark me, if we find the treasure it’ll be by the ghost.”