ou've known me ten years! Haven't I always
kept my word like a clock?"

Gobal stretched out his hand. "Like the sun-sure. That's enough. We'll
stand by my oath. You shall see the chart."

Going again inside the cabin, Gobal took out a map grimed with ceaseless
fingering, and showed it to Tarboe, putting his finger on the spot where
the treasure lay.

"The Bay of Belle Amour!" cried Tarboe, his eyes flashing. "Ah, I know
it! That's where Gaspard the pilot lived. It's only forty leagues or so
from here." His fingers ran here and there on the map. "Yes, yes," he
continued, "it's so, but he hasn't placed the reef right. Ah, here is
how Brigond's ship went down! There's a needle of rock in the bay. It
isn't here."

Gobal handed the chart over. "I can't go with you, but I take your word;
I can say no more. If you cheat me I'll kill you; that's all."

"Let me give a bond," said Tarboe quickly. "If I saw much gold perhaps
I couldn't trust myself, but there's someone to be trusted, who'll swear
for me. If my daughter Joan give her word--"

"Is she with you?"

"Yes, in the Ninety-Nine, now. I'll send Bissonnette for her. Yes, yes,
I'll send, for gold is worse than bad whisky when it gets into a man's
head. Joan will speak for me."

Ten minutes later Joan was in Gobal's cabin, guaranteeing for her father
the fulfilment of his bond. An hour afterwards the Free-and-Easy was
moving up stream with her splintered mast and ragged sails, and the
Ninety-Nine was looking up and over towards the Bay of Belle Amour. She
reached it in the late afternoon of the next day. Bissonnette did not
know the object of the expedition, but he had caught the spirit of the
affair, and his eyes were like spots of steel as he held the sheet or
took his turn at the tiller. Joan's eyes were now on the sky, now on
the sail, and now on the land, weighing as wisely as her father the
advantage of the wind, yet dwelling on that cave where skeletons kept
ward over the spoils of a pirate ship.

They arrived, and Tarboe took the Ninety-Nine warily in on a little wind
off the land. He came near sharing the fate of Brigond, for the yawl
grazed the needle of the rock that, hiding away in the water, with
a nose out for destruction, awaits its victims. They reached safe
anchorage, but by the time they landed it was night, with, however, a
good moon showing.

All night they searched, three silent, eager figures, drawing step by
step nearer the place where the a