same chart
of which Captain Coffin had once vouchsafed me a glimpse.
I remembered the shape of the island, the point marked "Cape
Alderman," the strange, whiskered heraldical monster depicted in the
act of rising from the waves off the north-western coast, the equally
impossible ship, decorated with a sprit-top-mast and a flag upon it,
and charging up under full sail for the southern entry, the name of
which ("Gow's Gulf") I must have missed to read in the short perusal
Captain Coffin had allowed me. At any rate, I could not recall it.
But I recalled the three crosses which showed (so he had told me)
where the treasure lay. They were marked in red ink, and I explained
their meaning to Miss Belcher, who had pounced upon them at once.

"Fiddlestick-end!" said that lady, falling back on her favourite
ejaculation. "Great clumsy crosses of that size! How in the world
could any one find a treasure by such marks, unless it happened to be
two miles long?"

She pointed to the scale at the head of the chart, which, to be sure,
gave six miles to the inch. By the same measurement the crosses
covered, each way, from half a mile to three-quarters. Moreover,
each had patently been dashed in with two hurried strokes of the pen
and without any pretence of accuracy. The first cross covered a
"key" or sand-bank off the northern shore of the island; the second
sprawled athwart what appeared to be the second height in a range of
hills running southward from Cape Alderman, and down along the entire
eastern coast at a mean distance of a mile, or a little over, from
the sea; while the third was planted full across a grove of trees at
the head of the great inlet--Gow's Gulf--to the south, and, moreover,
spanned the chief river of the island, which, running almost due
south from the back of the hills or mountains (their size was not
indicated) below Cape Alderman, discharged itself into the apex of
the gulf.

"Without bearings of some sort," said Miss Belcher, "these marks are
merely ridiculous."

"You may well say so, ma'am," Captain Branscome answered, but
inattentively. "Mortallone--Mortallone," he went on, muttering the
word over as if to himself. "It is curious, all the same."

"What is curious?" demanded Miss Belcher.

"Why, ma'am, I have never myself visited the Gulf of Honduras, but
among seamen there are always a hundred stories floating about.
In a manner of speaking, there is no such shop for gossip as the sea.
In ev