Dialstone Lane | Page 7

his pipe carefully on the table.
"Why?" he inquired.
"Well," said the captain, with a short laugh, "it is odd, that's all."
Mr. Chalk fidgeted with the stem of his pipe. "You know of sunken
treasure somewhere?" he said, eagerly.
The captain smiled and shook his head; the other watched him
narrowly.
"You know of some treasure?" he said, with conviction.
"Not what you could call sunken," said the captain, driven to bay.
Mr. Chalk's pale-blue eyes opened to their fullest extent. "Ingots?" he
queried.
The other shook his head. "It's a secret," he remarked; "we won't talk
about it."
"Yes, of course, naturally, I don't expect you to tell me where it is,"

said Mr. Chalk, "but I thought it might be interesting to hear about,
that's all."
"It's buried," said the captain, after a long pause. "I don't know that
there's any harm in telling you that; buried in a small island in the
South Pacific."
"Have you seen it?" inquired Mr. Chalk.
"I buried it," rejoined the other.
Mr. Chalk sank back in his chair and regarded him with awestruck
attention; Captain Bowers, slowly ramming home a charge of tobacco
with his thumb, smiled quietly.
"Buried it," he repeated, musingly," with the blade of an oar for a spade.
It was a long job, but it's six foot down and the dead man it belonged to
atop of it."
The pipe fell from the listener's fingers and smashed unheeded on the
floor.
"You ought to make a book of it," he said at last.
The captain shook his head. "I haven't got the gift of story-telling," he
said, simply. "Besides, you can understand I don't want it noised about.
People might bother me."
He leaned back in his chair and bunched his beard in his hand; the other,
watching him closely, saw that his thoughts were busy with some scene
in his stirring past.
"Not a friend of yours, I hope?" said Mr. Chalk, at last.
"Who?" inquired the captain, starting from his reverie.
"The dead man atop of the treasure," replied the other.
"No," said the captain, briefly.

"Is it worth much?" asked Mr. Chalk.
"Roughly speaking, about half a million," responded the captain,
calmly.
Mr. Chalk rose and walked up and down the room. His eyes were
bright and his face pinker than usual.
"Why don't you get it?" he demanded, at last, pausing in front of his
host.
"Why, it ain't mine," said the captain, staring. "D'ye think I'm a thief?"
Mr. Chalk stared in his turn. "But who does it belong to, then?" he
inquired.
"I don't know," replied the captain. "All I know is, it isn't mine, and
that's enough for me. Whether it was rightly come by I don't know.
There it is, and there it'll stay till the crack of doom."
"Don't you know any of his relations or friends?" persisted the other.
"I know nothing of him except his name," said the captain, "and I doubt
if even that was his right one. Don Silvio he called himself--a Spaniard.
It's over ten years ago since it happened. My ship had been bought by a
firm in Sydney, and while I was waiting out there I went for a little run
on a schooner among the islands. This Don Silvio was aboard of her as
a passenger. She went to pieces in a gale, and we were the only two
saved. The others were washed overboard, but we got ashore in the
boat, and I thought from the trouble he was taking over his bag that the
danger had turned his brain."
"Ah!" said the keenly interested Mr. Chalk.
"He was a sick man aboard ship," continued the captain, "and I soon
saw that he hadn't saved his life for long. He saw it, too, and before he
died he made me promise that the bag should be buried with him and
never disturbed. After I'd promised, he opened the bag and showed me

what was in it. It was full of precious stones--diamonds, rubies, and the
like; some of them as large as birds' eggs. I can see him now, propped
up against the boat and playing with them in the sunlight. They blazed
like stars. Half a million he put them at, or more."
"What good could they be to him when he was dead?" inquired the
listener.
Captain Bowers shook his head. "That was his business, not mine," he
replied. "It was nothing to do with me. When he died I dug a grave for
him, as I told you, with a bit of a broken oar, and laid him and the bag
together. A month afterwards I was taken off by a passing schooner and
landed safe at Sydney."
Mr. Chalk stopped, and mechanically picking up the pieces of