We visited them all in succession.  There was a “large cabbage-wood stump” on each and all of them!  It had seemed an absurdly inadequate direction, even as we had talked the narrative over in John Saunders’s snuggery.  But, confronted with so many “large cabbage-wood stumps,” one began to suspect Henry P. Tobias of having been a humourist, and to wonder whether John Saunders was not right after all, and the whole manuscript merely a hoax for the benefit of buried-treasure cranks like myself.

However, as the high points of the island were only seven in all, it was no difficult matter to try them all out, one by one, as we had plenty of time and plenty of hands for the work.  For, of course, it would have been idle to attempt any concealment of my object from the crew.  Therefore, I took them from their shell-gathering, and, having duly measured out twenty feet south from each promising cabbage-wood stump, set them to work.  They worked with a will, for I promised them a generous share of whatever we found.

Alas! it was an inexpensive promise, for, when we had duly turned up the ground, not only twenty feet, but thirty, forty, and fifty feet, not only south but north, east and west of the various cabbage-wood stumps on the seven various eminences, we were none of us the richer by a single piece of eight.  Then we tried the other cabbage-wood stumps on lower ground, and any other likely looking spots, till, after working for nearly a fortnight, we must have dug up most of the island.

And then Tom came to me with the news that our provisions were beginning to give out.  As it was, he said, before we returned to Nassau, we should have to put in at Flying Fish Cove—­a small settlement on the larger island some five miles to the nor’ard,—­for the purchase of various necessities.

“All right, Tom,” I said, “I guess the game is up!  Let’s start out to-morrow morning.”

And then I betook myself, like the great philosopher, to gathering shells on the sea-shore, finding some specimens which, to my unlearned eye, seemed identical with that shell so dear to the learned conchologist’s heart.

The following afternoon we put in at Flying Fish Cove, a neat little settlement, with a pretty show of sponging craft at anchor, a few prosperous-looking houses on the hill-side, and a sprinkling of white, or half-white, people in the streets.  I instructed Tom and the Captain to stock in whatever we needed.  We would lie there that night, and in the morning we would make a start, homeward-bound, for Nassau.

“You may as well have your sucking fish back, Tom,” I said, laughing in self-disgust.  “I shall have no more need of it.  I am through with treasure-hunting.”

“I’d keep it a little longer, sar,” answered Tom; “you never know.”

CHAPTER II

In Which I Catch a Glimpse of a Different Kind of Treasure.