However, there was really nothing to worry us.  There was no wind.  The weather was calm, and there was lots of time.  At last, after studying the chart and talking it over with Tom, who though he had only shipped as cook, was the best sailor on board, we decided to run north, and take a channel described on the chart as “very intricate.”

At last we came to a little foam-fringed cay, where it was conceivable that the shyest and rarest of shells would choose to make its home—­a tiny aristocrat, driven out of the broad tideways by the coarser ambitions and the ruder strength of great molluscs that feed and grow fat and house themselves in crude convolutions of uncouthly striving horn; a little lonely shore, kissed with the white innocence of the sea, where pearls might secretly make themselves perfect, untroubled by the great doings of wind and tide—­merely rocked into beauty by ripple and beam, with a teardrop falling, once in a while, into their dim growing hearts, from some wavering distant star.

It was impossible to imagine a cay better answering to my conchologist’s description of Short Shrift Island.  Its situation and general character, too, bore out the surmise.  On landing, also, we found that it answered in two important particulars to Tobias’s narrative.  We found, as he had declared, that there was good water there for passing ships.  Also, we found, in addition to the usual scrub, that cabbage-wood trees grew there very plentifully, particularly, as he said, on the highest part of the island.  Our conjectures were presently confirmed by the captain of a little sponging boat that, an hour after our arrival, put in for water.  Yes, he said, it was ——­ Cay (giving it the name by which it was generally known, and by which the conchologist had first mentioned it to me).  So, having talked it all over with Tom, I decided that here we would stay for a time, and try our luck.

But, first, having heard from the sponging captain, that he was en route for Nassau, I gave him a letter to Charlie Webster, telling him of our whereabouts, in case he should have sudden need of me with regard to Tobias.

It was too late to begin treasure-hunting that day, but Tom and I made an early start, the following morning, prospecting the island—­I having set the men to work gathering shells, in the hope of being able to oblige my shell-loving friend.  The island was but a small cay compared with that of Dead Men’s Shoes,—­on which we had so memorably laboured side by side—­some five miles long and two broad.  It was a pretty little island, rising here and there into low hills, and surprising us now and again with belts of pine trees.  But, of course, the cabbage-wood tree was our special tree; and, as I said before, this grew plentifully.  All too plentifully, indeed; and cabbage-wood stumps, alas! were scarcely more rare.

The reader may recall that Tobias’s narrative, in reference to his second “pod” of one million dollars, had run:  “On the highest point of this Short Shrift Island is a large cabbage-wood stump, and twenty feet south of that stump is the treasure, buried five feet deep and can be found without difficulty.” But which was the highest point?  There were several hillocks that might claim to be that—­all about equal in height.