y to round out his reel of pictures. "Could he not have been
rescued after making that last entry? Why, he must have been rescued!
How else could the journal have reached Honolulu?"

"He was picked up," interposed Ruth.

"By another whaler," added Little Billy. "Sick to death, and
completely lunatic. He never recovered his reason. He died in Kim
Chee's place. But I will continue my yarn, and you will see.

"You can imagine, of course, the progressive transformation I
underwent, while curled up on that old sea-chest, perusing the log. I
began merely with the intention of forcing my mind away from myself,
and thereby quieting my booze-jangled nerves; in a moment, I was
interested; then I was excited by the whalemen's discovery of the
ambergris, and lastly I was overwhelmed by the fact that John Winters's
Fire Mountain was identical with the _Cohasset's_ Fire Mountain. The
description clinched that fact. And to make more certain, I recalled
the wreckage the captain and I had come across, and the board with the
nearly effaced lettering upon it. The letters upon that board were,
'LUC,' and beneath, the word 'BEDFORD.' Of course, it was the remnant
of '_Good Luck_, of New Bedford.'

"It was about four o'clock in the morning when I finished the book. I
summoned the Chinaman, straightway. Kim was asleep, and he came
grumbling, in answer to my call. He thought I wanted drink, but John
Winters had effectually doused the flame in my vitals. I had happened
upon the probable clew to a vast treasure, and the thought of it
obsessed me.

"I put the question to Kim as to how the journal came to be in the
Chamber of Horrors. It was a poser for Kim. His old yellow face
wrinkled into a thousand dark creases, in the lantern's dim light, and
his shrewd, beady eyes wandered uncertainly between the book and my
face. But at last he remembered, and in his forcible and inimitable
manner he enlightened me.

"'Why flor you sing out? Me catchie one piecie dleam. You no catchie
'lisky? Why flor you want? Me savvy blook. Long time--one time come
glease ship. Up no'lth, sailorman he catchie one fellow walk about one
piecie boat alone. Velly sick. Catch 'im bats in 'liskers. Bring um
Kim Chee. Sailorman go 'way-- ---- 'tief! No pay. Qleer fellow velly
sick. No eat, no dlink, velly 'ot--all time tlalk, tlalk, about plecie
glease. ---- fool clazy! Bimeby die. Flind piecie blook under
clothes. Kim Chee no savvy. W