I opened the tin box and took out my knife.  I had caused the thin sharp blade, found in my dead father’s heart, to be fitted to a horn handle into which it shut with an ordinary spring-clasp.  As I opened it, the moonlight glittered down the steel and lit up the letters “Ricordati.”

Still in the shadow, he crept down by the rock, and once more looked about him.  No single soul was abroad at that hour to see; none but the witness crouching there above.  I gripped the knife tighter as he disappeared beneath the ledge on which I hung.

A low curse or two, and then silence.  I held my breath and waited.  Presently he reappeared, with compass in one hand and measuring-tape in the other, and stood there for a moment looking about him.  Still I waited.

About forty feet from the breakers now crisply splashing on the sand, Dead Man’s Rock suddenly ended on the southern side in a thin black ridge that broke off with a drop of some ten feet.  This ridge was, of course, covered at high water, and upon it the Belle Fortune had doubtless struck before she reeled back and settled in deep water.  This was the “south point” mentioned on the clasp.  Fixing his compass carefully, he drew out the tape, and slowly began to measure towards the north-west.  “End South Point, 27 feet,” I remembered that the clasp said.  He measured it out to the end, and then, digging with his heel a small hole in the sand, began to walk back towards the rock, this time to the north side.  And still I waited.

Again I could hear him searching for the mark—­an old iron ring, once used for mooring boats—­and cursing because he could not find it.  After a minute or two, however, he came into sight again, drawing his line now straight out from the cliff, due west.  He was very slow, and every now and then, as he bent over his task, would look swiftly about him with a hunted air, and then set to work again.  Still there was no sight but the round moon overhead, the sparkling stretch of sand, and the gleam of the waves as they broke in curving lines of silver:  no sound but the sigh of the night breeze.

Apparently his measurements were successful, for the tape led him once more to the hole he had marked in the sand.  He paused for a moment or two, drew out the clasp, which shot out a sudden gleam as he turned it in his hand, and consulted it carefully.  Presumably satisfied, he walked back to the rock to fetch his tools.  And still I crouched, waiting, with knife in hand.

Arrived once more at the point where the two lines met, he threw a hasty glance around, and began to dig rapidly.  He faced the sea now, and had his back turned to me, so that I could straighten myself up, and watch at greater ease.  He dug rapidly, and the pit, as his spade threw out heap after heap of soft sand, grew quickly bigger.  If treasure really lay there, it would soon be disclosed.