n
absent against his will, he had utterly forgot everything concerning me,
the terms of our last meeting, and the events of many years besides.

"Hush, and sit down!" he said, in the habitually chiding tone he had
used to the boy of ten or twelve. "Take your books and get your lesson!"
He pointed with the stem of his pipe to a stool in the corner where, as
a lad, I had passed more than one grim hour, and turned to his
companion, as older people turn from the interruptions of children.

Mary Smith, following behind, touched me gently on the arm. "Go and sit
down," she formed the words with her lips rather than voiced them.

There sat beside my grandfather a vast, fat creature with a forest of
greasy black hair and beard about his pallid face; his heavy hands lay
motionless in his lap, forcibly reminding me of an image I had seen of
some Oriental god upon his throne. His eyes were scarcely opened, his
breathing was almost imperceptible; a gross animal content appeared in
him as of a full-fed, lethargic crocodile. Side by side, he and the
gaunt, fierce-eyed old man presented no mean allegory of spirit and
body. A table was before them, and in the middle of it a toy the like of
which I had never seen in this house or elsewhere--a globe of crystal,
perhaps the size of an orange, held up on a little bronze pedestal. The
fat man's eyes, or so much of them as one might see, were fixed upon
this thing with a kind of stupid intensity; one could have fancied him
paying tribute to some idolatrous shrine. The captain watched him with
an equal earnestness; so might the Roman mob have hung upon the reading
of the sacred entrails; and there was about it the air of a
well-practised, familiar rite. At last my grandfather asked:

"What do you see?"

[Illustration: "THE FAT MAN'S EYES ... WERE FIXED UPON THIS THING WITH A
KIND OF STUPID INTENSITY"]

The other's lips moved, and an unintelligible whisper reached me.

"Ay, that's it, that's it," said the captain, and sent a quick,
searching look about the room. "Doubloons--pieces-of-eight--Spanish
pillar-dollars--doubloons, doubloons! That is what it would likely be
made up of, eh? But where--try to see that--where?"

Another interval of silent gazing, and the oracle uttered some further
statement, which my grandfather received with an impatient groan.

"Doubloons--piles of gold--I know!" he said. "And a ship. But
whereabouts was it, eh? Surely you can see whereabouts it was?"

"It