Dialstone Lane | Page 7

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 his pipe placed them on the table.
"Suppose that you had heard afterwards that the things had been stolen?" he remarked.
"If I had, then I should have given information, I think," said the other. "It all depends."
"Ah! but how could you have found them again?" inquired Mr. Chalk, with the air of one propounding a poser.
[Illustration: "'How could you have found them again?' inquired Mr. Chalk, with the air of one propounding a poser."]
"With my map," said the captain, slowly. "Before I left I made a map of the island and got its position from the schooner that picked me up; but I never heard a word from that day to this."
"Could you find them now?" said Mr. Chalk.
"Why not?" said the captain, with a short laugh. "The island hasn't run away."
He rose as he spoke and, tossing the fragments of his visitor's pipe into the fireplace, invited him to take a turn in the garden. Mr. Chalk, after a feeble attempt to discuss the matter further, reluctantly obeyed.
CHAPTER III
Mr. Chalk, with his mind full of the story he had just heard, walked homewards like a man in a dream. The air was fragrant with spring and the scent of lilac revived memories almost forgotten.